A young friend turned up this afternoon, car sounding like a boy racer - it's a small 10 year old Rover 25, and to put it in context, she'd paid the princely sum of £175 a couple of months ago with 6 months left on it's MOT. Exhaust blowing, her boyfriend busy with something else at the moment but will weld it up given time, but have I got anything to stop it sounding like a formula 1 car in the meantime?
She's quite an unusual specimen in that she's more than willing to crawl under it and do things, (which I'm not any longer !!)
So, I rolled up a bit of tin plate, doubled up some jubilee clips to hold it on and sent her under to fit them. Still obviously blowing out as the noise is only marginally reduced.
Now years back you could buy 'Gun Gum' for patching exhausts - is that still around ? But what do I have on hand to pack down between the tin plate and exhaust pipe - NOTHING - or at least nothing that'll take the heat.
... no hang on a minute, I've a 20 litre drum of Sodium Silicate, a dustbin full of dry sand, and a bottle of CO2 on my MIG welder. Now as we all know, sodium silicate - a liquid syrup, when exposed to CO2 converts to Silica Gel - a glass hard heat resisting substance.
So I mix up a small beaker of sand / sodium silicate and send her back under with a putty knife to pack the joint, then hand her the CO2 pipe and set it. A bit crusty and soft inside, so start the engine and let the exhaust heat up - this enhances the setting and of course generates more CO2 on the other side of the bodge.
By the time we'd had a cup of tea, it was nice and hard and off she drives, car sounding 'normal'.
I bet the boyfriend curses when he has to chip that lot off in the future
