Exhaust Manifold Swap Done!

I've been waiting for several weeks to get the time I needed to finally swap out my cracked exh manifold. Admittedly I was pretty anxious as I've read lot's of posts where bolts break, crud falls into the ports and all sort of other horrors.

Good news is mine was fairly painless. Still a lot of dirty, dirty work but everything came apart rather easily. I even replaced the studs and they double nutted right out! Whew!! The only "casualty" I had was one of the bolts holding the manifold to the downpipe. I couldn't get the right angle of the dangle and stripped the nut with my impact gun. A few minutes with my cutoff wheel took care of that.

I did have problems getting the lower bolt between cyl #4 and #5 back in. It's #1 in the torque sequence. There just wasn't enough clearance between the bolt head and the pipe to get a socket over. Fortunately, I tried something and it worked. I simply threaded that one in a couple of turns, just enough to hold it in. I was able to slip the intake manifold over it and get the locator pins to clear. It dropped right it. Since it was already a few turns in, I had just enough clearance to get a socket on it. The rest when in easy peezy.

Torquing was a bit of a challenge but I have tons of extensions, some with wobble ends and some very thin wall sockets so I was able to get everything clicked up mighty fine!

One thing I discovered removing the exh. The nut on the stud next to the firewall was only finger tight. I suspect I had a exhaust leak there as well.

Total time including scraping, cleaning, a 20 minute break and final test drive was about 5 hours.

I didn't "document" the process as there are already good writeups on it. I did take a few pics though.

This one is after everything's all apart. I haven't cleaned anything yet. I regret now that it's back together that I didn't change the CTS.


This is the crack in the #6 exh tube.


This is #5.

did mine today as well. Don't understand why everyone is pulling the injectors out. you can actually flip the intake mani on top of the vavle cover.

I took mine off so I could get the heat shield off. With the heat shield off, I could see the lower bolts better. It was only 9 bolts (5 shield and 4 fuel manifold) and the connectors. With my palm impact, it took all of about 60 secs to pull them. I left the injectors in the fuel manifold. I think it allowed me to do a better job scraping the old gasket off as I didn't have to deal with other parts laying about in the bay (but that's just my preference).

Hmmm... Got a double post......

What brand manifold did you use?

I want to do mine but am a bit apprehensive. Maybe in the summer when I have time to not use the vehicle as it is my DD.

Blaine B. said:

What brand manifold did you use?

I want to do mine but am a bit apprehensive. Maybe in the summer when I have time to not use the vehicle as it is my DD.

Click to expand...

That's why I waited until I had a week off. In case I broke something or had some other difficulty, I wouldn't get stuck.

As for the brand, it's some "Made in China" brand I got from the Parts Bin http://www.thepartsbin.com. It's a direct bolt on. The only issue I had with it, is that it looked like it had been dropped and one of the flanges was peened over a bit on one edge. A few minutes with a file took care of it.

Other than that, it was pretty straightforward. Just tag your injector connectors, sensors and vacuum lines and keep the hardware grouped together (mainfold bolts, heat shield, etc.) I used ziplock bags to keep the hardware from rolling around.

Dunno, maybe I have a leak like you did too from a loose bolt. Didn't look. Mine's not that loud. I used some thermosteel on the crack but it came back a bit. Oh well it doesn't sound like as bad of a job I thought it would be.

Since I would be in there anyway I'd seriously like to entertain a 99+ intake.......mmmmmmm.

When I seafoamed it a few months ago, I had billowing smoke all over the engine bay. I thought it would all come out the tailpipe. That's when I realized I had a cracked manifold. It was too smoky in the bay to see where it was coming out. Didn't feel like breathing in all that gunk either.

Once it cleared, I got underneath with an inspection mirror and spotted the #6 crack.

Now, remember, mine's a 2wd. It rarely ever sees a dirt road and has been in SoCal all it's life so YMMV.

Yeah they all crack, sometime or another. The origional, non-revised manifolds either. Doesn't matter what type of stress it sees, although I'm sure that makes it show up faster.