exhaust(ed)

May 5, 2009 &bull motorcycling

In January I started noticing the Vespa was getting progressively louder. Or, at least I thought it was getting louder. This is kind of like how that old prank goes — the one where you put a quarter in your coworker’s telephone receiver every day. The receiver gets heavier and heavier, but it’s so incremental that she doesn’t notice it. Until you empty it out and she smacks herself in the head when she answers the day’s first call.

Anyway, the Vespa kept getting louder and louder and I finally figured out there was an exhaust leak. So I took it to our local Vespa dealer and told them about the problem. I ended up leaving it there for exhaust leak analysis (ELA) and some other work (oil change, etc.). The service guy called back and said the pipe was cracked and I’d need a whole new exhaust. He recommended a custom pipe since 1) we were already going through the trouble of replacing it and 2) it would be lighter and more performant*. (He probably should have also mentioned, 3) it would make them a lot more money and 4) it would turn out to be a huge pain in the ass for me, but he didn’t.)

Seduced by the thought of having a kick-ass, rumbling Vespa, I took the bait and went with the custom exhaust. Almost three weeks later it was finally ready. Heidi dropped me off and after waiting about an hour for the kids running the shop to stop dicking around, I rode off on our new and improved scoot. I only got about 300 yards, though, before I realized the loud SMACK I was feeling was the rear cowl hitting the top of the new pipe. I went back to the shop, raised some hell, and got a ride home from a burn-out** in the service department.

A week later I was back at the shop and things were ready. For real this time. I drove away delighted and didn’t look back.

Until today. And when I did, I saw my precious exhaust — muffler and pipe (aka, the whole goddamn shooting-match) skidding across the road. Before I get too far, though, let’s back up a second. First there was what seemed to be a loud explosion, which was really just the fact that the entire muffler was suddenly gone. This was followed by an explicative, a boxer short check, and a quick run-through of all of the things that could have just happened to cause such an incredibly loud explosion without a loss of power. (It really is crazy how time slows down when stuff like this happens.) After all that I still had no idea what happened. Then I looked down, saw asphalt where the muffler once lived, and put two and two together.

I pulled over, called Heidi (“Shit, only one bar left — better make this brief.”), and left a voicemail saying something like, “The exhaust fell off,” and “I’m not sure what to do.” I took an inventory of the tools I had (one multi-bit screw driver, a laptop, and a mobile phone charger) and then walked down the street to retrieve the pipe/muffler. Luckily it seemed like everything was still in one piece (the weld holding the bracket broke, causing the pipe to fall down, hit the ground, and get ripped off the exhaust manifold). I decided to try to reinstall it. No problems there. I started it up and it purred like a kitten. Now I just needed to figure out how to keep the exhaust on so I could get home….

vespa_exhaust_fix

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* A new, made up, but EXTREMELY popular word at work
** The nicest guy I had dealt with all day

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