scoobysnax83

I just seafoamed my car again today and noticed massive leaks around both stock exhaust manifolds. As soon as I find my pot of gold I plan on putting on headers and a descent exhaust system, but what is this harming in the mean time. In other words would my car idle better and pull harder with these leaks fixed? What is my computer thinking when it reads the O2's. Even worse I have my new vortech elbow on the way from summit, currently there is a pretty bad leak right around the TB, but the vortech will fix that. My car runs fine right now, no problems at all. Just wanted to know what exhaust leaks do to your engine. Thanks

Dr.Mudge

Poor gas mileage, down on power, and a SES light whenever the computer freaks out about your false lean condition, mostly WOT is when mine would show up.

scoobysnax83

thats whats weird, I know the leak is pretty major from getting gassed out from the seafoam and from being able to hear it, but i get no SES light and gas mileage is great, better than my V6 camaro. Now the power thing may be an issue since I don't really have anything to compare it to. I am really on a small budget, what kind of headers could I get for cheap? They would also have to bolt right up to the stock system since I'm not gonna have enough money to do the exhaust at the same time. Any suggestions.

Dr.Mudge

Strange, it may not be enough to be affecting your O2 (yet?). When I'd go past about 4k RPM with my exaust leak, I'd get a SES and it would show up in Freescan as a lean O2. Even without the SES BLMs were off, it was richening up everything to compensate due to reading this extra air that was 'leaking' in.

scoobysnax83

o trust me, that makes perfect sense to me, and you're absolutley right. I'm just surprised it hasn't tripped the SES yet. Anyway, what did you do about it?

Dr.Mudge

I got Fel Pro exaust gaskets A leak at the stock Y pipe on the drivers side will also cause a false lean condition.

I like the Fel Pros for several reasons, the open ends allow you to hang your header or manifold in place from the rear and front bolts while slipping on the gasket, and they are re-useable and seem to work and seal fine for me. If one spot looks bad from poor manifold sealing, you can pull the gasket and carefully apply some copper RTV on the gasket and replace, it just gets a little tougher to put back on without destroying your RTV "seal" by rubbing it everywhere.

scoobysnax83

I guess that would probably be the most economical approach for me. I might just do that. Where did you get the fel pro's from, and how logn did it take you to do the whole job?

unTAmedLS1

also it will caus ea loss in vaccuum

Dr.Mudge

Intake leak would be a vacuum issue, the only loss in vacuum from the exaust leak would be due to a less efficient engine if running overly rich, so it should not have much impact on that.

I'd say to expect to spend half an afternoon if not a day doing the swap, if you feel like rushing I'm sure you could do it in 2 hours, but if you haven't done it before I would suggest you just relax and pick a day your off from work to do it.

scoobysnax83

two questions, I heard somewhere that you can't use the same bolts that you took out. Is this true? If so, then where do I get new bolts from. Next, when I take the bolts off, will the manifold move freely or will I have to take the bolts out that go to the exhaust pipe as well. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I have never done this before. Any help is much greatly appreciated.

O yeah, and where did you get the fel-pro's from? I think carquest carries fel-pro, no?