How Dangerous is a Major Exhaust Leak
 

I put a down pipe in over the weekend and in the process of removing the old bolts between the stock dp and the cat, I broke one of the two bolts. I can't remove that broken bolt for the life of me. Torch, pb blast reverse bits.. forget it.. I needs a shop with something more than my hand tools to get it out. I ended up finishing up the rest of the DP with just the one bolt connecting the dp to the cat.

Anyways, with one of the two bolts connected I have a major exhaust leak .. obviously.

How dangerous is it to drive the car to a muffler shop to get those bolts put in properly. I equate this to roughly running a straight pipe and I know I'll boost creep on a stock ecu with the leaks.

If I drive it to a shop 15 mins away.. how dangerous is it? I figure keep it under 3k rpms and it'll be ok. Thoughts?

you have a boost gauge right? as long as you stay out of boost it is fine. an exhaust leak before the turbo (like i had) can burn up the gasket $$$$$ for the stock metal gaskets. but just driving a few miles is fine.

How major is major? Everybody's definition is different. Worst case senario the exhaust leak could be bad enough to cause a fire (extreme case). But if you do as you say and keep the rpms down and stay out of boost you should have no problem getting to the shop.


John

It will be fine to get to a shop, just dont gun it

It's just an exhaust leak. Don't boost to avoid boost creep. Simple.

thewird

No problem to take it to the shop, other than the noise.

Yup thanks all.. exhaust is fixed. The shop blew out all the old studs on the cat and replaced them with new bolts. It's sealed up nice and tight now! Tanabe Concept G and new bonez dp are making for an awesome sound and nice power gains according to my butt dyno.

It kills me how I can fight and fight with hand tools on something for hours and a shop with compressor, cutting torches and a lift does it in 15 mins.

Runs awesome, and on a new 19 dollar Bosch o2 sensor I might add!