The manifold saga, a story of strange helpful hot tub people and automotive stores

After the manifold blew I was a bit low, but at least I knew what I had to do! I headed directly to Mc Donald’s and ordered cheeseburgers.

I needed to undo the manifold parts. The manifold was merely an assemblage of galvanized pipes much like the ones you would find at an hardware store instead of a molded proprietary piece of hardware I would have had to order. I’m sure that there are pipe and pipes but I knew that high Nickel pipes or copper would cost a fortune. Fortunately the ones I held in my hands were neither, so I decided to repair with the same low quality pipes.

Before I could put new part in, I had to unscrew the rusted pieces of broken pipes. I knew I needed a vice, pipe wrenches and a torch. The sort of heavy handed approach required could not be done on a boat, so I looked for a workshop. The first I came upon was hot tub shop. There were old car parts and whatnot lying around. The place was a something between an oddity museum and a junkyard. The owner had dyed hair that looked a bit orange but when you got to talk to him you really understood how eccentric the man truly was. He was also really intelligent, a quick study, and helpful as hell. In the yard there were two guys getting hammered on light beer while working on tubs who were almost too keen to help. They had the vice, they wanted to help and they even told me where to get the parts. McDonald hardware was straight across the street and he really had everything for my project and boating in general for that matter.

It took a lot of violence to undo the parts and a lot of bleeding was involved, mostly the yard guy’s blood. Once the parts were put together I felt like a maverick mechanical genius. The high lasted until I got to the boat. Once installed, the parts worked perfectly. Maybe I am a mechanic superhero! Perhaps I’ll get a cape.