The aircraft is finally back home in its hangar in Smiths Falls. Eight days to fly from Oshkosh to Smiths Falls.

Plan A was for a coworker to fly me and the loaner exhaust system to North Bay this morning. But, the long range weather forecast had some showers and thunder showers in it, and the weather guys kept changing their story on when a weather system approaching from the NW was forecast to arrive. I really needed to get this done on Saturday, so to avoid the possibility of a weather abort Terry and I drove to North Bay Friday evening - Plan B. I changed out the exhaust system on Saturday morning, while Terry drove to Smiths Falls to pick me up.

I took a closer look at the failure after I removed the exhaust system. The pipe broke immediately below the weld that attached the flange on the top end of the pipe. The weld looked completely normal to my untrained eye. The break looked fresh on the outboard edge of the pipe (closest to the viewer in this photo), but there was a lot more exhaust residue on the break on the inboard edge of the pipe. Perhaps a crack started on the inboard edge, where I couldn’t easily see it during inspections, and it finally progressed far enough so that it went the rest of the way around in a very short period of time.

Here is the flange. The outboard edge is on the bottom in the photo.

Tomorrow I’ll box up the exhaust system and we’ll ship it back to Larry Vetterman on Monday.

Thanks to everyone who helped: Hal and Armand for the hangar space in North Bay, Alfio for the ride to North Bay and back so I could put the aircraft in the hangar, Mark for the use of his exhaust system, and Terry for driving to North Bay and back.