Hey Cody that sucks, I’ve had flanges where I couldn’t get in to drill or weld and I made a strong C type clamp that was small and used them where the broken bolts were to clamp the flanges together, seemed to work, maybe a bit macgyver but same as you I didn’t want to pull another 10 rusty bolts out and break them.
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How do mechanics tackle this on the flat rate book?
Your experience has been pretty much the same as mine Cody. Always break flush or indented. I have always had to pull the heads to safely drill them out so more expense for head gaskets. I can’t see doing it on the block without screwing the head up. Of course I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I saw a youtube with a set up to safely weld nuts on broken studs but it was pricey.
I assume you are over your kidney stones. Compared to that broken manifold bolts are childs play. in my totally honest opinion…
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Thank God it wasn’t the head bolts, just the flange to the Y pipe. I’m gonna need to take the manifolds off now to really work on them.
Fingers crossed I get those off okay.
Also yeah I passed the stone last week. All that pain and fuss and it passed like it fell out of my pocket.
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Thank God Almighty that the stone passed with out to much pain. My older brother had to have his sonic blasted and it still was painfull to pass.
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Lost my cool today pulling the exhaust manifolds off of the truck.
I really don’t like whoever designed the square body trucks and put those motor mounts right THERE. Or whoever designed the heat shields for the spark plugs, and put the bolt to attach it UNDER everything.
I wish we didn’t kill the Straight Eights after WW2.
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Hey Cody, their thought in engineering behind the car makers industry is this. You will give up a take it to the shop and pay someone else to do it for you. Hopefully the dealership that makes this vehicle. This way you pay them back twice or three, maybe four times the cost of the vehicle new. Thats why they changed things up to make it harder to work on. Of course you can now buy the EV’s and pay up to 5 and 6 times the cost of a new vehicle and even feel good you are going all GREEN and it is so good for the environment, other than your charging power is coming from a coal-fired generation plant or nuke generation plant, or better yet a diesel generation plant.
Now if you are getting you power from hydro generation then it is all good and golden right? Except the horrible mining practices and environmental issues to make the batteries, and it still takes lots of oil pumped out of the grond to make all the plastic parts and mining for metals for EV’s vehicles.
Hang in there brother Cody and keep the old one and fix it up and DOW with it. This is a lot better for the environment and in the long run it will save you monies. My two cents of soap box standing. Okay I stepped down now. Just wanted to encourage you are doing it right.
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The important question is “did you win?”
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Just thinking about my 65 Chevy Pick up. Two men could sleep on each side of the 454 I have in it and there would be room to roll over. I could probably unbolt the trans, hoist the engine out, change the plugs and oil filter and bolt it back together faster than I could change the plugs on the 2000 5.3L I have.
Worst thing ever was when regular people decided that having a pick up truck was cool. Then they had to have power windows, heated power back and forth, up and down seats and computer screens in the dash and ultra-phonic sound systems. I don’t think you can even buy a regular work truck now.
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Tom, luckily they still make old fashioned single cab Fleet trucks. My 2011 came with a radio that couldn’t even take a CD or Cassette, or have a 3.5mm input.
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I did get both of the manifolds out at the cost of those heat shields.
Welding a nut and washer didn’t work, so I cut it flush and drilled then tapped. That’ll teach em.
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Yes Tom, I hear you. On my 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee it had all the bells and whistles buzzers but the control module screen malfunction and was causing all kinds of problems. I by passed it and unpluged it. Oh no now I do not know when my window wiper fluid is getting low and no anti theft alarm to go off and does not work causing the engine to start and keep not running after 5 seconds. What am I going to do now. I do not know if it will DOW with these important features not working.
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Studs were all kinds of crooked but I made it work. Just took a lot of finesse.
Y Pipe is on there tighter than a duck’s you-know-what. Time to get on the O2 sensor bung and put on a glass pack cherry bomb.
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A duck’s quacks? Plus 20 more.
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We’ll keep it G rated and say yes, Bob.
Now a new hurdle, the Y pipe stops about 6 inches short of a cross member. Not sure how I’ll bend the pipe, I’m thinking it should be below the cross member since the parking brake cable is above that.
Not sure if I should just weld up an intermediate pipe that will clear the cross member, like in a shallow U shape, or bend the Y pipe down somewhat.
Also, I took off the belt for my air conditioning. I’m thinking of removing that whole system. I’ve driven with no AC and lived, but I’m glad I have blowers for Defrost to work somewhat.
All that space saved could be a nice spot for my air mixing.
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Here’s some pictures of what I mean.
Looks like it’ll go beneath the transmission crossmember easier than above it.
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I have about 40 of those heat shields laying around somewhere
Never put them back on myself. Then again it was rare i put manifolds back on either. Do a couple hundred sets of headers over the years personal trucks and customers.
Spark plug wire heat shields exist, and are very nice to work with
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I’d have gone to headers but I already had the new Y pipe, and I’m just broke and impatient enough to kludge a repair on these.
I think if I get any problems out of these I’ll move to some 4-2-1 headers. Still gonna be single exhaust though, need to keep the grunt.
Ordered a length of some stainless 2.5" that I’ll pie cut bend.
Having problems finding how the stock configuration was supposed to go. If the VIN decoder was right, I’m trying to make this V8 exhaust work with an I6 exhaust system.
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Well, Rock Auto goofed on the exhaust pipe measurements for this Y pipe.
They said it was 2.5" but that’s the OD for the flared female end, which means it’s actually a 2-1/4" pipe nominal.
Good thing I only ordered a short bit of pipe, I can always use it later.
I think I’m just going to cheap out and use flex exhaust for this portion. It’s going to be an awful dogleg bend if I go over or under this cross member. Just need to get this exhaust away from directly under me. A side pipe is looking better and better every day.
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I like the vertical pipes like on the Dodge Little Red Express. Don’t really need a step side to do them.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/mopp-0111-1978-dodge-lil-red-express-truck/?galleryimageid=6de409ae-7978-4e23-be40-dcc1cf4d1e20
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Ordered two 45 elbows for the Y pipe, made it up into a dogleg and used some baling wire to hang the muffler.
Sounds a whole lot better, and it finally has its bottom end again. Lots of get up and go.
I might change the 45s to some 20s so I can line it up to the tailpipe.
I don’t know who made the muffler but it looks like a wore out glass pack.
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