tifosiv122

I was driving to Philly (from NJ) with 3 other people in my car yesterday...cruising at about 80-90ish on the NJ Turnpike and all of a sudden we hear boom, crank crank crank, grrrr. I put the car in Neutral and pull to the side. Check the tires, rims, opened the hood, everything seemed ok. We get back in, I put her in first and get ready to merge back on the road and it sounds like I'm driving a truck. I hear/feel/smell that the exhaust is ending near the headers. Not too much I can do so I continue driving to Philly...man is the car loud. We get to the parking lot and we see the fumes exiting around the connection between the headers and the exhaust but the car is too low to see exactly where it's coming from. At this point there was no CEL.

We get ready to leave Philly and sure enough the CEL comes on, which I had expected anyway. I drove it back home and asked my friend to go outside and let me know when he hears me...sure enough about half a mile away he could hear me coming down the road, it was just that loud. I'm on my way to my mechanic, hopefully the headers didn't crack or anything. I'll report back with pics, maybe video, tonight or tomorrow. When I started it up today no smoke came out of the tailpipe, everything exited from the header area so the noise is straight from the engine, no pipes or mufflers.

Erik


EDIT: forgot, we had to drive with the windows and roof open, the carbon monoxide was getting us all a bit light headed.

drexappeal

HOLY $4!T, Erik! Glad the car didn't just completely shut down on you (although, exhaust problems don't normally lead to a complete breakdown most of the time). Hopefully you're mechanic can figure out what happened. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but if I do, I'll post it. Keep us updated.

drex

r3v1ls

Wow that's definitelly an unpleasent experience. I'd be pretty ticked of if something like that happend to my car.

SeaCoupe

Hmm, possible that you just blew out the header gasket. Even a small little hole can make big time noise. Might just be a bolt got lose or something too.

advans

wow erik, is ur car ok then!?? any idea whats going on!??

mig888

holy crap erik. If I could do anything to help you, please let me know. so you didn't actually lose any pipes? Just a really loud sound coming from the mid of the car?

Might be the connection to the midpipe (secondary cat). If this is the case, I hope it isn't a manufacturing defect.

flip

c230 o5

for me this is fukn bull**** if it has to do wityh hthe kleeman headers or pully i would get so ****n pist off at kleeman you ddint spent alot of money for this to happen id get really ticket OFF
good luck erick

pookie

can you hear anything yet? lol.

hope you get to the bottom of this. pretty surreal experience.

tifosiv122

Ok got an update. Took my mechanic all of 8 seconds to figure out the problem and all of 30 mins to fix, 29.99 of that waiting for the 500+ degree engine bay to cool so he could touch the headers (he still used Kevlar gloves). Apparently the headers have 2 o2 sensor holes near the top, we assume for different applications. Only one is used at any given time, so the other is plugged with a dummy screw type deal. Apparently it came loose, shot out, hit the heat shield (we see a tiny dent), rattled around and we assume fell onto the road. My entire exhuast was coming out of that one inch hole...yeah. Anyway, he said it isn't common, but it's not that uncommon either. It was either just not screwed on tight enough or maybe a defective dummy screw thing. I have pics and vids which I'll post tonight, you have no idea how loud it was.

The CEL cleared after about a half day of driving, car runs and sounds fine now. I asked him how to prevent it and he basically said there isn't much to do besides trying to make it super tight...the loctite stuff wouldn't fare well at those temps.

Thanks for everyone's concern, will post the pics and stuff later.

Erik

dmatre

If you've got the clearance, you can try to drill the dummy screw, or tack-weld a small nut onto it, then safety wire it, so that it can't unscrew. The only thing worse than having a problem is having the same problem twice!

tifosiv122

Here is the hole the entire exhaust gas was going through...hard to believe but true as it was not coming out the tail pipe at all!



I'll be able to post the sounds tomorrow or the next day, I need to remove the video as it's just a black image and not worth the extra MBs to download.

dmatre - I was thinking of doing something like that, but in all honesty, in the unlikely event that it happens again, I know exactly what it is and can do it myself (providing the car is cold). He gave me an extra one to take with me in the car.

Erik

Roupin

Loctite red will be able to withstand those temps. It's the loctite blue that's can't.

Haven't you guys ever ran open headers before? I used to run open headers on the big white thing in my sig (LT1 engine), and my friend tried the same thing in his C320.

rlee02135

Wow. Glad those $2K headers didnt break.

tifosiv122

I drove my last car about an hour without a catback, I needed to drive and pick it up. It was just the engine + headers and it was a v6 and nowhere near as loud as it was with this car...just because of the size of the hole it was coming out of. I'm going to look into that red loctite thing. Thanks for the tip.

Erik

StillKickin

Does running without a cat, just muffler do anything other than **** off greenies...like damage the engine?

Tishers

I imagine that you will get all sorts of check engine lights and maybe even a fuel mix problem. The O2 sensor on the exhaust is a feedback into the engine management system that also influences fuel/air mixtures.

tifosiv122

Yeah, I got a CEL but it went away after we fixed it.

Erik

mctwin2kman

I had an O2 blow out of my 190 Exhaust once. Scared the crap out of me but was just loud as hell. Also had an exhaust blot break between the manifold and downpipes. Currently I have a slight leak from when I pulled my cat and gutted it due to it being broken up inside and rattling. Now enjoying better response from the engine though, good thing considering it is only a 120Hp engine in it.