Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Rusty nuts

For some time I have been troubled by jingly metalic noises coming from the back of the truck, I assumed it was some neglected piece of scrap rattling around in the bed of the vehicle, but the other day I inspected the wagon and no such matter was present. It then occured to me that it might be other and I immediately found that the exhaust pipe had rusted right off the muffler and was hanging dejected from its little rubber mount. We have been busy with earthquakes and typhoons, so I haven't felt much like disabling the vehicle. Muffler manifolds can be a bugger to get off sometimes as they swathe themselves in rust. Today the weather was not too bad and I had a bit of a brainwave to give me an advantage in the battle of the rusty nuts. I wasn't keen on messing about with a blow torch up by the petrol tank. We have a kind of insect defense, which is an aerosol spray that just freezes the bug in question (We use it on the stinging centipedes -85 degreesC in an instant and they are still OK if they thaw out). So I went and got a can of that and froze the nuts for a moment to loosen the rust bonds.
The old adage as I remember it goes, if you can't get it on take it off, and if you can't get it off put it on.
If you don't play with your spanners much my interpretation is, don't struggle to get something on, get it off quick and find out why it is being such a bugger. If you can't get a nut off that is stuck, try tightening it a little first, if it shifts a bit that way go for the big pull to get it off.
I applied the later approach and was rewarded with success. The TIG welder is the bees eyebrows for this kind of welding job and there was just enough shape left in the rust to orient the parts correctly. I treated the thing to a neat new end on the pipe as well with a scrap of stainless pipe.
I had to drive the truck up the road to some flat ground to jack it up and get the more cumbersome welded unit back in place, it made a lot of noise with no muffler, but it all ended nicely and we should be OK for a few more years.