Ok, I determined, from all the great input from the list, that I need to
rebuild my front suspension. I figured, since I'm a little wary of driving
the car until I get that rebuild, while I wait for the parts to come in, I
might as well use the time pull the exhaust manifold and repaint it and the
engine block while I was there.
Well, I tried to pull the manifold and discovered two things. First, the
manifold is broken. The section that is held down by front most upper bolt
has broken away from the rest of the manifold. It doesn't really seem to
affect much, since it didn't brake into the actual manifold chamber, and no
exhaust is leaking, but its kind of bothersome nonetheless. I thought
possibly I could just epoxy it back on, using JB Weld or equivalent. I guess
it depends on how much that bolt is helping to hold the manifold on. But if
something like that wouldn't work, does anybody have a spare manifold? For
the price of a new one, I'd rather just take my chances with the one I've
got.
The second thing I discovered is that the connection betweeen the manifold
and the front pipe seemed very determined to stay together, and refused any
attempt I made to get it apart. I didn't try a pneumatic impact wrench
(mainly because I don't have one :-) but just about everything I could think
of short of that. Does anybody have any experience getting these apart?
Should I bother trying to get it apart (like maybe go get an impact wrench)
or should I just cut off the old front pipe and replace it? Of course, I
would still need to get the remains of the front pipe off the manifold after
I cut it up, assuming I don't replace the manifold.
Jeremy DuBois
Programmer/System Administrator
Thermalogic Corporation
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