So, my 7 has been my daily driver for most of this year, but now that my Passport is fixed I decided to give the 7 the attention its needed. It has had a bad exhaust leak between the turbine and manifold, but I didn't realize how bad it was until I started to take it apart. 3 out of 4 bolts were finger loose and there was only a sliver of gasket left! No wonder there was black soot all over the LIM. It was really noisy before, but now you can hear the spool, louder BOV, more responsive in lower RPM, more boost and quieter in the cockpit. I knew that it was messed up in there, but didn't realize how bad!

 

Yup just changed mines too sucks to remove everything just to change it. Mines ended up been a completely missing bolt on the hotside. I said the hell with it and installed a new thin gasket from Atpturbo.

 

I'm in the process of replacing mine right now also.. half-bridge + backpressure = blown gaskets..

 

Yeah, kinda sucks to take it all out, but I actually had fun doing it this time, it's been awhile since I have been able to wrench on the 7. Had the music on hanging out in the garage all day Saturday taking my sweet time. While it was out I changed all the lines, like the oil/water lines coming from the turbo and put new heat wrap on them. It now has an aluminum gasket that I got from the rx7store, which before it was a composite gasket which you can see a bit of in the pic.

Also found 4 bad vacuum caps too, so that helped as well!

What kind of exhaust you got with that half bridge port?

 

Happened to my single system 3 months after install. Caused by either the manifold flange warping or not being trued after welding assembly.
I had it trued at a machine shop and now it is almost 6 years without any problems.

 

Crazy! Did you get a copper gasket? I put semi-perm locktite on my bolts to keep them from backing out. Hope it's not a bear to take apart if I have to :/