So on my way home from school i notice a strange ticking noise coming from my passenger side. I just had a 350 swapped in and had headers and a custom y-pipe thrown on my exhaust which had been a custom cat back set up. Today i got under the car and tightened up the headers and checked for any other leaks which i couldnt find, so i assumed that the header was the source of my problem(the bolts were pretty loose actually) . After firing it up and driving it the tick is still there, Now im starting to question if it is an exhaust leak, my header has about 1 cm of space between it and the frame. I have new engine mounts on the car as the header was previously making a loud knocking noise under acceleration. Could this tick be the header hitting the frame ever so slightly? Should i be looking for another leak or a blown gasket? Or is this something else completely? The noise seems to be alot louder today than it was previously.

Heres a vid of the noise, Im driving the car down the road at about 30 Mph

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8N6PgfNBlI

 

Mine was the same way. After I tightened the headers, I checked the connection at the y-pipe. Those bolts were all lose and once I tightened that, it was gone.

 

its prob the gasket, i put new headers on, got the exact same sound, tightened the header bolts, was quiter, but got worse again, was the gasket, if it is the gsket, spend the $35 and get copper, they are amazing

 

If it is the header gasket, I can vouch for copper as well. I installed copper first when I did my headers and after one year of DAILY DRIVING they are fine.

 

Gaskets are copper already, upgraded when i had them put on, i still need to check the y-pipe connection but that seemed okay, im going to recheck the headers again also, its pretty hard to get a wrench down there to tighten them up. What would i look for if it was a blown gasket? Everything looked fine and the gaskets are copper and brand new.

 

if theres a chunk missing, the gasket is blown, if there is a large carbon trail coming out by a prot, its leaking, but not "blown" nessisarily., just get a 3/8 closed/open end wrench, take the headers off enough to take the gaskets out, and check um, i put headers/gaskets on.off 5 times in one day last week, you'll get it down to 15 min for both sides after a while lol

 

I too have heard great things about the "copper solid" gaskets. The ones I can personally vouch for though, are the Percys "dead soft" aluminum. As with above mine is a daily driver and I have no problems. I also checked all my bolts every day for the first week after the install. Probably way overkill but almost a year now and no leaks...



Max,

 

Come to find out i dont have copper gaskets, summit never sent them to me so i have normal ones on, but there blown, ive got copper gaskets on the way though, my exhaust guy however said my headers were to hot and my car needed to be tuned and that putting new gaskets on would be worthless because they would blow again in no time? Ive never heard of this before maybe one of you guys has? He based this on the fact that the coating or paint thats on the headers is chipping off all over the header. What do you guys think?

 

Just put the copper ones in. You'll be fine.