Bang
Topic: Road Rage
My muffler blew up. I am not exaggerating, I am not making this up.

I'd planned to take the car in to the garage for some exhaust work anyway, so I'm not upset. I was pretty sure the muffler was going to be swapped out anyway. But there's been trouble with the car starting in damp weather lately.

So the other day at work, as I was getting ready to leave, and the engine was complaining about turning over, it backfired a couple of times. Nothing major, just a couple of burps.

Then, like a burp from the diaphragm of Beelzebub, it went BANG! Nearby cars with alarm systems started... well, alarming. Smoke rose from the back of the car in light wisps, and I smelled gasoline.

So I tried again.

It backfired a few more times, and people came to see what idiot was blowing up his car, or perhaps firing random shots toward the nearby housing. I got an offer for a ride home, but I turned it down. Never abandon your vehicle until all hope is lost, and I still harbored hope.

Evidently, Hope wasn't doing much else at the time, so she dried off my electrical lines and the car started. I drove home, noticing how much louder the car had got, and fearing that the backfire had dislodged the exhaust line from the engine. When I got home, I looked under the car at the exhaust line.

It looked like someone had put a cherry bomb into my muffler. It had exploded.

It turns out that the problem was that my electrical lines had got old enough that they shorted a bit when they got damp. It's been humid and/or rainy here for a while, so it acts up in that kind of weather. Once the engine heats up, the lines dry, and all is well again. The auto place is going to fix it on Thursday. I'll drop it off in the morning, and have it back in the evening, in time to go back to work.

This is the kind of thing you have happen that you say "Later, we'll all laugh at this." And it's costing me money, but I'd planned on spending it on this kind of thing anyway. The detonated muffler was just a bit of punctuation in the saga of automotive repair. And as I said, it was going to get replaced anyway.

And it was so worth seeing the expressions on the faces of passersby when that thing went off.