i have those edelbrock tubular exhaust system headers on my 350, and i blew out the exhaust gasket. it was one of their semi-metallic ones. so I loosened the header (without taking it out of the car), and took the gasket out.

i inspected the head and the header, and neither had any gasket material to scrape off, they were totally clean, so i just put a new copper gasket on it. i tightened it down, then went and ran the car and its leaking just as bad as it was, at the same exact spot where the old gasket blew out. so did i do something wrong? or is my header warped beyond repair?

someone told me to double the gaskets but that sounds like a pretty stupid idea. should i try it?

and also, is there a different set of headers i could put on that would work with the edelbrock y-pipe? i don't need emissions legal ones.

 

are you sure it's from the gasket area? maybe there's a hole in the header or flange itself?

 

its coming from the header from where it mounts to the head. i can feel the air blowing out.

 

is the way i did it acceptable? should i have put some sort of sealant on it, or taken the header all the way out and sand it?

 

anybody have advice?

 

is it warped? did you torque down in the correct sequence? are the threads in that side stripped or damaged?

 

Has anyone one used the soft seal gaskets like from percys? than say they wont blow out and are reuseable?

 

header is probably warped, but are you using lock washers? Copper gaskets should have cured it. Yes you can double up gaskets, I just never liked it.

 

i have brand new ARP stainless header bolts with the supplied washers, which aren't lock washers.
i torqued them from the middle out, is that the right sequence?

and i can't tell if they are warped. is there any way to tell? other than taking them off and straight edging them? can i double up copper gaskets?

 

I had a similar issue where I couldn't get one of my headers to seal. I kept burning out "paper" style gaskets, then I couldn't get a set of copper gaskets to work. The only thing I could get to seal was Percy's aluminum gaskets. Also, when I first put everything together, two of the bolts just kept comming loose for some reason, and I don't know why. I even ended up torquing them back down every couple days for a week or so, and then maybe every couple weeks for about another month. After that, they just stopped comming loose thank goodness. If I were you, I would recheck your bolt torques after a few heat cycles.