Alright, I just got my rebuild in the car. Hooked everything up just fine. I put her together myself and I was amazed to see that with a little oil in the housings she started right up.

Now for the problem, when I connected the exhaust manifold to the rest of the exhaust I thought nothing of the sealing of it. I used a new gasket. So when I finally started it, i got a huge amount of smoke coming from there. I was evident where it was coming from. I shut it down and tried my best to tighten the bolts further. After a couple hours of toiling with it I thought I had it nailed, well i was wrong. The gap was big enough to slip my fingernail in. I am pretty sure it is inly the top of the flange that is not sealing, bottom and sides are fine. So is it just misaligned with the manifold? If so how would i go about fixing it? I don't have a welder, but i do have the old gasket that was in there. I thought about trying that but i figured I'd see what you guys thought first.

Any help or idea is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Greg

 

Did you connect the manifold to the rest of the exhaust before trying to bolt it to the engine? If so, bolt to the engine first, so there is no tension pulling on it, then connect it to the downpipe. The gasket should be all you need there. Heck, Ive used old, worn out, used gaskets with no problem before. As long as all 4 studs are lined up, there is really no way it can be mis-aligned.

 

maybe the manifold is warped

 

4 studs?

We are talking about were it meets the downpipe, or rest of exhaust. It just seems like itisn't lining up at all. I was thinking about loosening the actually manifold bolts to see if i could get any play out of that.

 

Sorry, I mustve misread your original post. I thought that you meant that it was leaking between the manifold and the engine. My advice would to be assemble the exhaust in sections. This seems to be about the best way to ensure that all the flanges are sealed well. Bolt the downpipe to the manifold 1st, and make sure that it is all sealed. Then bolt on the cats (presilencer, whatever). Then the y-pipe, and muffler sections. This way you can ensure everthing is sealed up properly.

 

If all else fails, take the precat off the manifold and get out the old steel straight edge that you used to check your housings for warpage with, and use it to check the two flanges.

Trust me, it is better to have an exhaust leak on a fresh rebuild than a COOLANT leak! Give yourself a pat on the back.

 

You see I have a slight problem with doing all of that, one that I probably should have mentioned earlier. The guy who owned the car before me was apparently a cheap bastard and the entire exhaust(except for the manifold) is welded. I can't really adjust anything. If all else fails I am gonna takr it to a muffler shop and hae them cut and reweld the pipe in the right place.

 

Hmm, a bump to stimulate the viewers perhaps?

 

I once had a similar problem, and what I did was double-gasket it, and it seemed to work fine. I know its kind of ghetto, but a quick fix until you have time to get it corrected.

 

maybe you could also try liquid gasket stuff along with the real gasket. Just an idea until you figure out a better solution.

 

You know that double gasket idea came to me. I am gonna try it. As I sat there staring at my old gasket I figured what could hurt? Its twice the sealing....haha...right?

Can you get that liquid gasket stuff for high temps?