Hi gang,

I was having a problem with a rattle, which ended up being an exhaust leak. I know this because after I re-torqued all of the fasteners the "rattle" went away. In addition, the exhaust sounded way "smoother."

So after driving 100 miles or so, the rattle is still gone, but the exhaust doesn't sound smooth any more.

Is there a technique to keeping the exhaust bolts from loosening on their own?

 

My best guess would be to figure out how much you need to torque them down and get it tightened to spec.

 

Well, that's a pretty good answer. I did try to do this; my Boss side pipes came with the torque specs for all the fittings. I tightened all except two using a torque wrench. There were two nuts on a Torca coupler (actually one on each coupler) that my socket didn't fit and I had to guess. Think it's those? Or maybe the TracKey lopey idle is shaking them loose even though they're tightened to spec?

 

Update...

I re-torqued everything to spec. It wasn't the Torca couplers that I couldn't get the torque wrench on, it was the side pipe to h pipe fittings.

Anyway, once torqued the car sounds great but give it a couple miles and it starts to sound leaky again.

So...

What am I doing wrong?

Am I supposed to be torquing these things while they're hot? Sounds a little dangerous to me.

Am I supposed to be using high temp Loctite?

Is it just my crappy HF torque wrench? I figured it would be good enough for a non-critical application.

Any help is appreciated.

 

Use a jam nut if you can get one on there. Otherwise try new hardware and see if that stays tight. A Lock washer is another option.

 

You could take it to a muffler shop. They may be able to either


supply you with proper hardware or at least see why its loosening up on you and fix it. probably just needs an impact gun with lots of juice (PSI)








It could just be that the hardware isn't lined up properly (Taking shots in the dark here). The shop that setup my catback, used an impact gun and zipped everything on without anything like lock nuts or Loctite.