We finally were packed up to leave the cabin, for a few more days in Cody with family... and as we left, the muffler on the van finally fell OFF!Well, not OFF - just off on one end... and we couldn't pull it off because of the long, twisted tailpipe!
So... right in the middle of the Chief Joseph Hi-way we tried to use a rope to tie it up, out of the way. No good.
Fortunately, the only traffic that cold, icy night were two power-lineman trucks just returning from restoring electricity to Cooke City, MT. They stopped and helped.We tried to knock the muffler off the pipe with a hammer. It was pretty rotten and corroded... but those things are tough! It didn't work.
We even tried a hacksaw and sawz-all... but they barely scratched the pipe!
Finally, we re-inserted the muffler back onto the manifold pipe, and using 6-guage copper wire, wired it back together.We also used wire to attach the muffler to the frame in 2 places.
It worked! Actually, the van ran better (and quieter) with the muffler OFF! The wire kept it up to get us down to Cody. We were careful not to hit any roadbumps and go slow over all the cattle guards.
Back in Cody, we tried to get it fixed, but all the shops were booked and we had to leave the next day for home.We wired it up with Bailing wire in several more spots, and drove it 1050 miles all the way back to the Pacific NorthWest, without a hitch!
Good ole Wyoming bailing wire... definitely the cheapest fix of the trip!
