my r/h/s header pipe cracked.....

[Darren]

I've had an ever increasing, annoying leaky exhaust noise coming from the r/h bank of the engine. It's been getting worse over the last 6 months or so. I knew it was coming from the r/h header pipes somewhere, but could not narrow it down - very difficult to wrap hands around glowing hot extractors trying to find a leak.

Coming home from the sunshine coast a week ago, the noise got real bad, embarassingly bad.... So the car went up on stands and I embarked on the task of pulling out the r/h bank headers. I suspected it would be a shit of a job & it was. Had to drop the steering rack, pull the r/h engine mount bolt out & jack the engine up. And then jack the front of the car up about a metre in the air so I had enough room to pull the pipes out from underneath the car.

Got them out after about 4 hrs of screwing around under the car. The result below. The picture shows a crack in the pipe where it joins at the Y, that crack extended about 3/4 the way around the entire pipe! I took it to an exhaust shop and got it welded back up. The guy at the exhaust shop said he's repaired quite a few cracked pacemaker headers -apparently it's fairly common, especially on Ford 6 pots. So something to consider maybe before buying Pacemakers.....

It was an absolute mongrel of a job to put the things back in, but the exhaust noise, thankfully is now gone..

http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv276/Daz308/crackedheaderpipe.jpg

[pvk308]

hm were they wrapped in header wrap darren mate.......... could be the reason for the crack as the header wrap sweats when hot and when they cool they dont allow the moisture to escape very common problem

[Darren]

yeah I was told heat wrap can cause the metal to overheat and crystalise. But it was the joint that cracked, and the remaining metal was ok - so I'm skeptical whether that was the cause.

Also the guy at the exhaust shop wasn't surprised to see them cracked. He said Pacemakers are bad for it.
Either way I left the heat wrap off, as I have been told now by a few exhaust places that it can lead to crystalisation in the steel

[pvk308]

hmmmm wil have to have a look at the pacies on mine for a gander and look see not good if thats the problem at least they are fixed mate