This is not ‘The Schumaker Way’ that involves fixing something in a way that doesn’t involve buying expensive parts or paying for expensive labor. It also usually involves fabricating a part out of some leftover bit from another project. Like when my dad bought a new control board for my mom’s SUV window switch, but it didn’t work so he just built a little box with his own switch to roll down the window.

That box was taped to the door for over 2 years before my mom finally got him to get it fixed the right way.

I wish this was that ingenious… This is more of a ‘I’m tired from fixing the more important part of the car the ‘right’ way and I just want to make this a little better then go inside‘ kind of fixing.

The problem was that Laurel’s exhaust had broken completely away from the catalytic converter. After the first few weeks of embarrassment at driving a little sub that sounded like a 16 year old had hollowed out the exhaust on purpose we kind of got used to it. But since her car has to be inspected in a month I thought is try to fix it.

Here’s what I came up with, a couple of U-brackets linked together in some haphazard way. I don’t think it will pass inspection, but at least it won’t be embarrassing to drive for the next month while I think about how to fix it for real.