On the way to the Mopar Happening, while pulling away from a stoplight I noticed a little bit of a loud-sounding exhaust. I assumed it was the diesel pickup truck in front of me. After traveling about 100 feet or so, with the truck pulling away, I noted the sound was getting louder. Uh-oh. Next came a pop, followed by the sound of metal scraping on the roadway. Oh, crap!

Pulled over and checked the problem. The front exhaust pipe (between the exhaust manifold and the muffler) was dragging on the ground. It broke at what appeared to be either a flange clamp or hanger (couldn’t really see it very well laying in the ditch).Looked like it just rusted through.

Didn’t have anything with me to strap it up to the car, so I limped the car to Bob’s house and used a couple coat hangers to hook it up to the frame. The car runs fine, but it’s loud. Thought about canceling my plan to attend the Mopar Happening for a little bit, but that thought was not a happy one, so I decided to head out to Belvidere in spite of the problem.

Rumble, rumble … Or as the old muffler company commercial used to say, “Rattle, rattle, thunder, clatter, boom, boom, boom!”