<VV> Fuel Pump Issues-WARNING

[Vairtec Corporation]

At 10:11 AM 4/24/2011, Frank DuVal wrote:

>A backfire in the muffler will not set your can on fire. But it could
>open up the muffler with all that gas available. Your ears will
>ring....


Correct.

The scene:  The Chicago CORSA convention, mid-1980s.

The vehicle:  1962 Greenbrier, bone stock but with racing gas and, 
um, a little advance cranked in to the distributor to give the stock 
80-hp engine some poop.

The time:  7:00 AM.

The location:  Hotel parking lot.

The van, having been driven to dinner the night before, had been 
parked since returning from the restaurant.  I hit hit the key, and

ka-BOOOM!

Blew the muffler apart like an exploding cigar.  Everyone who later 
looked at the muffler laughed out loud.  But more importantly, 
everyone in the hotel who was still asleep was no longer asleep.

No vendors had a replacement muffler on-site.  When I asked Larry 
Claypool if he had one back at his shop, he said,"that was YOU?!"  He 
had been, literally, on the other side of the hotel at the time of the blast.

He did not have a muffler readily available.  I drove home, 790 
miles, with that splintered muffler on the van.  My ears are still ringing...