I should mention at this point that it's good practice to work in an open and clutter free environment with no hazards. I OTOH decided to work here:
....the punchbag being strategically placed so that I hit my head on it every time I stood up.
After that first failure I did some internet research as to why the .6mm MIG wire I was using wasn't feeding smoothly- half an hour later realised I wasn't using the right feed roller. I installed it with some difficulty and then really thought I was ready to rock as the wire came shooting out of the torch every time I pressed the trigger.
First I managed to plug the little hole:
....nothing's gonna get past that!
So then I went back to the main task of butt welding the two bits of pipe together. And I managed it, just about.
When you're MIG welding, you want to end up with a nice smooth bead like this:
(Image cheekily hotlinked from
here, hope they don't mind).
What you don't want to end up with is this abomination:
....which looks like Beelzebub's chalfonts after he's been crapping fire and brimstone for a month.
So anyway, back on the car. Or so I thought. The pipe has to link over the NS swinging arm, and there's a joint in the cheapo aftermarket pipe to facilitate this. Of course it had rusted solid and there was no chance of splitting it. In the end we had to remove the rear wheel (which required a bicycle ride back to mine to retrieve my torque wrench, the bolts having corroded against the wheel). We then forced the bugger through with a lot of swearing, nearly severing the rear brake pipe in the process. Eventually it went on, although I could not get the middle mounting rubber on whatever I tried. Probably because my clampless, handheld attempt at getting the alignment right wasn't really all that:
...the pipe now sits at a rakish 30 degree angle. Jaunty! We fired up the engine and....the exhaust was much quieter than the tappets and injector pump
. Clearly, 95%+ of the gas was now going through the silencer. I had a bit of a feel round the weld though, and sure enough there were a few little jets of gas escaping from holes in my brilliant weld
.
So in six hours of annoying, and extremely hot and sweaty work, I turned a car that would certainly fail its MOT, into one that would probably fail its MOT
.