As Mara may have mentioned, at the advice of a friend, I made some "upgrades" to my '99 Suburban prior to our sabbatical trip...K&N cold air intake system, Gibson headers, Magnaflow exhaust and High-flow catalytic converters, air-bag spring system, cooling system flush, complete transmission fluid exchange, etc.
I started this project several months before the trip, thankfully, as my Newberg mechanic inserted repeated delays into the process. After finally getting the headers installed, I kept hearing a ticking noise that sounded like either a valve tap or an exhaust leak. When I took it back to my mechanic, he informed me that one of the headers was leaking. I called Gibson, who assured me that they had NEVER delivered a failing header, but they promptly sent me a new one, armed with my promise to send the failed one back for analysis. To be honest, I think it was an install issue by my mechanic, but he did manage to get the second one working (after he charged me for replacement gaskets, that is).
As we were driving to Yosemite, on the first leg of our journey, I thought I heard a similar ticking noise to the header leak, but it sounded like it was coming from the other side. I asked Mara if she heard it, but she didn't seem to notice the change in engine noise (she probably wasn't as tuned in as I was, since I had experienced the whole header issue). As we got closer to Yosemite, the noise got steadily louder. By the time we were in an area that required me to drop down into FIRST GEAR to make it up the hills, we were notifying the world, echoing through the canyons, that we had a major exhaust leak. We drove 20 miles or so making this noise and I had a serious knot in my stomach. I just couldn't imagine that I would find a mechanic out in the middle of nowhere.
We did make it to the Mariposa KOA and get set up, so at least I could go out the next morning looking for a repair without pulling the trailer along.
Friday morning, early, I headed to the small town of Mariposa, as I had gotten a tip along the way that the town had two decent mechanics. I had looked up the operating hours of the one most highly recommended and showed up about five minutes before he was to open up. Imagine my chagrin when I sat there for 20-some minutes and nobody showed up. I called the number on the door and heard the phone ringing inside. OUCH! I snooped around and found another number and called it. It was apparently his home phone, as his wife answered. She told me, in a mildly exasperated voice, that they are CLOSED on Fridays. To her enormous credit, she did recommend the tire and muffler shop in Bootjack...yes, I said Bootjack. I drove over to Bootjack, with visions of Gestapo in my head, or maybe loggers with those big-lugged boots on. The owner was VERY busy, as his seemed to be the only repair shop open within a considerable radius. Through the entire process, he answered the shop's mobile phone every couple of minutes. Even though he had several guys working there, everyone wanted to talk to HIM. After some troubleshooting, he diagnosed the connection where the right header ties into the crossover pipe. His research found that the connection does not use a gasket, so he tried to just torque the heck out of the bolts so that the connection would stop leaking. I was sure that his bill would be staggering...I mean, here we are in the moutains around Yosemite, he's the only game in town, and he has been messing with my truck for over an hour. You can't imagine how happy I was when I asked what I owed him and he said, "awwww, well, let's call it $20." I was one satisfied customer.
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