exhaust leak and a funny fix
 

Hi All,

I was at a friends house this last Friday night. After fully warming the car up I made a drive by to demonstrate the very nice Pssssssshhh (stock BOV) that AdamC's Cheap Bastart intake creates. This resulted in a :icon_tup: and then I was on my way home. By the end of the street I noticed a tick, tick, tick ... :twitch:

Cut to the next morning with the car on ramps, splash pan pulled, running and me under it. After about 30 seconds I could tell that the exhaust leak was coming from the front of the car ... maybe the DP, maybe the turbo manifold but near the front.

After pulling the y-pipe, air pump, air intake and as many of the heat shields as possible I had found a small 10mm bolt but no loose DP nut, exhaust manifold crack or obvious sign of a leak. :scratch: I attributed the nut to one that I had dropped two months earlier and not found. At this point an hour had gone by and I was quite sure that I was going to have to pull the turbos to figure out the problem. :facepalm1:

Before committing to the turbo pull I decided to move the loose accessory belt out of the way and have one more listen with the engine on. I mentally gave myself 20 seconds as the water pump wouldn't be spinning. I could feel an obvious leak between the water inlet banjo bolt and the primary turbo exhaust turbine housing. I turned the car off and started looking one more time.

Andrea my wife walks up. "Are you sure that that little screw you found didn't come out and cause he leak?" Me: "No, it's a bolt and it's too small to hold the exhaust pipe or turbo manifold on." Andrea: "But it's all rusty like the rest of the exhaust ... didn't you loose one from the top of the motor? They are all shiny up here." Me: "Yes, but it's too small."

Five minutes later :"I found it, one of small bolts rattled loose and exhaust is leaking from the hole. I covered the hole with my finger and the leak sound disapeared." Andrea: "That little screw is what fell out?" Me (with a sigh) "Yes." Andrea, suggestively: "Just remember, a little screw goes a long way." :rlaugh:

Well, at least I'm ready for my Efini y-pipe install ... might as well leave the car dissembled for the next day or two until it arrives.

James

http://www.paventi.net/~james/pics/9...me%20Out/1.JPGhttp://www.paventi.net/~james/pics/9...me%20Out/3.JPG

holy crap that's a clean turbo.

thanks ... I pulled the whole thing a couple of months back to fix / clean up an oik leak

Nice.

Same thing happened to me but I only found the missing bolt hole after I took the turbos off and reinstalled with new gaskets and still had the leak.

That is when I broke out the vacuum hose to listen around for the exhaust leak and found it was just that bolt missing just as yours was.

hey im also having a tick, tick, tick when my turbos warm up, it got worse over time, pulled everything off today and found a bolt i dropped a few weeks back. (trying to put the inside bolt in for the rear turbo in feed) just wondering if it was the hole you had there making the ticking or the bolt rattling around

Now you can ask your wife to help (since you clearly need her) every time you work on the car :)

You will like the efini y-pipe. Boost may go up slightly, so keep an eye on it. Been a while, but you may have to remove the air pump to install it.

There was exhaust coming out of the hole, re-installing the bolt completely stopped the noise. Put another way the sound had nothing to do with a rattle. This was obvious when driving the car ... accelerate harder and the tick, tick, tick becomes louder.

My car makes this noise too sometimes; I'll check into this. Thanks for posting!

Ironically, my wife has saved me before. Sometimes you just need another perspective.

That's so true. I used to have a friend that would hang out while I worked on my first FD. He knew little about automotive repair but would point out obvious things. I was either too tired or too involved to see them.

My wife does the same and adds her writers wit to the mix.:)

Let me just ask something here. If I removed all my heat shields from the turbos and didn't put any of those little bolts in should I be experiencing an exhaust leak?

To my knowledge none of the heat shield bolts plug exhaust holes.

I've literally have had this problem for YEARS and mine does the same exact "ticking" noise you just described. You may have just solved my issue for me too! I'm so excited to check and see if that is the case with my leak also! I had also pulled turbos and pretty much my entire exhaust and torqued every bolt and nut to spec. Still that damn "ticking" was there. Cross your fingers for me everyone!! ;)

Hey guys not sure if you are aware, but if you have a friend with a evap. Smoke machine you can use that too.
Just heat the exhaust up to normal temps then,shut the car off. then put ithe smoke machine end in the tail pipe and look around for the leak. A (whiter) light is verry useful when looking also.