[T3] I posted an add on from my July HE exhaust leak.

[William Jahn]

Yesterday I took a look at the empi header to the right HE pipe . I removed
the clamp and was able to check the HE OD and it was 35 mm . I could only
pull the header back 3/16'" . I was not in the frame of mind with the
excessive heat we have here to remove the header . What I did was pull the
header back the 3/16" insert a block of wood to hold it there and tried to
 insert the .011" aluminum sheet I have . Since the header end was sort of
oval shaped I really could not get even one wrap of aluminum sheet in
there. What I ended up doing was using the permatex ultra copper gasket
maker and getting it in the header gap and rotated the crush seal to spread
it around the header and filed the header flange so the clamp would fit
better. Then once I felt the Permatex was in there enough and put the clamp
back in place and found the metal ring was not seating well and backed off
the clamp and forced the ring to fit well then tightened the clamp. I let
it sit now over 24 hours and have not started the car yet. My hope is it
will seal the leak and if not I'll remove the header . I just didn't want
to mess up the seal on the left since it does not leak. The empi header
flange on the right was not formed right as far as I can tell . It's the
header not the HE pipe . Now that the permatex is at least sealing the
crush ring to the header flange and the metal ring now sits against the
crush seal hopefully this will fix it at least until I can either replace
the system with something better or see what I can do with the empi cheapo
header removed . If the sealer blows out which I sort of doubt it will then
I'll see what I can do. I just can't handle the noise the leak makes .

I used a small screw driver to get the metal ring up against the mesh crush
ring/seal because it was only hitting at best half the crush ring . I got
it to contact all the way around so it's even now. I even took a 1/4"
square metal bar stock I had to try the beat the empi header so called cone
lip so it was more of a inside cone shape the filed the outer edge to a
bevel so the clamp would not stop against it. Did this before filing or
adding sealer . I think the main issue was both the sealing surface of the
header and the metal ring not seating fully around the mesh crush ring
which is all this sort of clamp/seal system does . The crush ring does fit
snug on the HE pipe.

Well drove the car last night and today, NO more exhaust leaks . I can't
say if it was fixing the header flare and getting the metal ring to seat
better or if the permatex sealer helped .
William

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