Changing Exhaust Manifold Gaskets on a Pre-Cat

[cjs]

Hello all

I need to change the gaskets on my Pre-cat Griff, I know it's a Bas***d job however I'm quite handy with the spanners so want to give it a go. I've done some searching and found Snorky's write up which will be very usefull.

What I do need to know is are there better gaskets than others? Does anyone sell a good complete kit? Do I need any gaskets to go between the manifolds and the 'Y' piece and should I change the bolts there?

And of coarse any other advise is welcomed!

Chris.

[barreti]

From what my garage told me when they recently did a repair on the manifolds on my 4.3 there is no gasket between the joints on the Y piece. Just shit loads of exhaust paste LOL

[Wildfire]

I got all my Gaskets from ACT and they work fine. If you're doing both sides you may as well take the exhaust off, if you have a SS one it's pretty easy. Use High Temp RTV rather than exhaust paste which goes hard.

[mongoose]

Use new lock washers on the manifold to head bolts on re-assembly.

Edited by mongoose on Wednesday 28th June 19:21

[antonyj]

cjs said:

I need to change the gaskets on my Pre-cat Griff, I know it's a Bas***d job however I'm quite handy with the spanners so want to give it a go. I've done some searching and found Snorky's write up which will be very usefull.

What I do need to know is are there better gaskets than others? Does anyone sell a good complete kit? Do I need any gaskets to go between the manifolds and the 'Y' piece and should I change the bolts there?

And of coarse any other advise is welcomed!

Chris.

Call me pedantic, but I have just taken mine off on sunday, Just waiting for the new gaskets to arrive.
The offside one took about 50 mins, the nearside about 40mins.

Not as bad as I had read it was going to be.........

In fact on the offside, I only had to get under neath for the middle two.( I removed the alternator , and bracket)

The near side , I did all from above.

Just one thing I didnt expect, the rear lower bolts, were actually cap screws!

Get stuck in its not that bad......

[tom's dad]

I did mine a few weeks ago, drivers side only. the job tok time and patience and I had to work from under the car, but it turned out to be much easier than I had expected. I managed to access the bolts with a flexible head ratchet spanner set that I purchase from Halfords. I found that the most difficult bolt to access at the rear of the engine was an alan screw and this was easy to undo with a sawn off alan in one of the spanners.
My circular gasket at the T junction fell into 3 pieces and I found that a replacement was impossible to obtain. I pieced it together and used it in conjunction with Loctite 5920 which worked a treat. I had obtained Gaskets from a source that I cant remember and they were poor quality, so i purchased some puka gaskets from a TVR dealership which were much superior.
The face of the manifold was very poor. I rubbed it down as best i could to get an even finish and applied a fine film of Gun Gum to the manifold only, before applying the gasket - sealant on the aluminium block would be a pig to remove in the future.
I hope this is of use.

[cjs]

Thanks for all the tips, I will probably give it a go next week. Yes the gaskits that go on the 'Flange' between the manifold and Y piece are not available so I will use some sealant as advised by others as well, I have a whole selection of spanners however the flex head ratchet from Halfords sound a good idea.

Keep the tips coming.

Chris

[dnb]

Get the flexible ratchet spanner. You can do them without, but it'll take at least twice as long.

Soak the bolts in some kind of penatrating oil first - they have been known to sieze in and snap. Conversely if yours are like mine, some may only be finger tight!!

On the whole, it's not as bad a job as I thought.

It's worth allowing yourself some time to deal with any chassis issues - mine (a MY96) had a significant amount of corrosion on the chassis under the manifolds. Best to deal with it when you can get at it.