Huge exhaust leak?
Roughly 3 months ago I installed pretty much every bolt on and an EF2, roughly 1500 miles on all of it at the moment.

About a week ago I notice a sound that wasn't there before, hard to explain over text but it sounded like a little piece of paper in a fan. I instantly thought vacuum leak but my vacuum/boost is spot on and so is my AFR.

So it has progressively got worse and now my car sounds like a 1979 F150 without an exhaust. My car is now so loud I never really go more than 20% throttle.

I searched the whole exhaust under the car and don't see any black soot anywhere on the exhaust. Now i keep getting "system too lean bank 2" SES light. It will come on than go away after 3 starts than come back a day or so later, not sure if these problems are related, again my AFR is perfect.

So now I'm thinking the leak/broken in half exhaust has to be either towards the top of my MAP Recirc DP or maybe my stock manifold cracked?

Post up some opinions on what this could be, the car sounds "Almost" normal at warm idle but at cold idle and any throttle sounds like the above mentioned truck (if that year of F150 exists).

I haven't had time to search the mani/upper DP cause I'm working some crazy hours but I will on Monday (day off)

 

If it sounds like an exhaust leak it is probably an exhaust leak! lol


Did you re-use the gasket between the manifold and turbo? It's unlikely the stock manifold cracked those things are for the most part bulletproof.

 

All gaskets were changed when we replaced everything.

 

Take a video and put the camera in a few different spots. Should help you track down where it is at least.

 

I tried taking a video while driving but the wind overcomes the noise in the video. Not like I can set my phone in the engine bay and drive around lol

 

Lol I meant while you're parked. Have someone rev the car a little bit and spend some time hunting it down. I bet you could feel the leak with your hand if its big enough. Obviously do that after a dead cold start unless you enjoy melting the skin off your hands.

 

I'm gonna search for it today after work, took the wife's car to work so mine wouldn't be 10,000 degrees when I'm looking around. From the way the exhaust sounds I'm picturing a huge break in one of the DPs welds

 

Alright so got home from work and took off the heat shield and instantly knew it was the manifold. The heat shield was literally covered in soot.

Every single manifold bolt I could touch was almost all the way backed out, anyone know how many mani bolts there is? I only see 4 on top, also the back 2 bolts are different lengths it seems, the passenger side one is alot shorter than the driver side.

Now I just have to get a set of deep sockets so I can tighten them back down.

 

They should be studs from the manifold to the engine. There should be five on top and 5 on bottom with nuts for each and factory spring washers for the stock manifold. atleast it's fixable... Who did the work? If you are talking from the turbo to the mani then there are only 4 total.

 

Me and a friend did the work, they were all tight when we finished. All 4 on top were backed out so I tightened them all down again and the car sounds normal again!

 

So since I have tightened the bolts down I check them every 3-4 days now and they are almost always loose. Today I drove 2 hours on the interstate and when I got to where I was going and the car cooled down I checked the bolts, one bolt was all the way out... I literally grabbed it off the manifold.

I know everyone is gonna say use locktite but I heard your not supposed to on exhaust bolts cause you will never get it out without breaking them. Are there any alternatives?