By jason mack on Tuesday, July 24, 2001 - 04:26 pm: Edit

I seem to have an exhaust leak on the passenger side of my 98 disco. Sounds like the collector gasket. I am wondering how hard is it to reach the 3 bolts that hold it on? Any special tricks? For starters it looks like I will need a long extension and come at it from underneath. Anything else? I am hoping I will just have to tighten the bolts up and it will go away, but we shall see

By Anode on Tuesday, July 24, 2001 - 05:25 pm: Edit

get some PB Blaster or Liquid Wrench and soak the hell out of the bolts, say overnight. This will give you a fighting chance of removing them without breaking them.

By Alex Schubow (Alex) on Wednesday, July 25, 2001 - 01:15 am: Edit

Check your exhaust manifold for cracks. Very common.

Alex

By gp (Garrett) on Wednesday, July 25, 2001 - 02:14 am: Edit

replace both sides of the collector gaskets while you are down there. i did those and my manifolds all within a week. these gaskets seem to fail before 60K for sure. same with my '94. cracked a manifold, but had it rewelded. lasted for a good year at least until the cars early death with a tree. (RIP)

By Blue Gill (Bluegill) on Wednesday, July 25, 2001 - 07:43 am: Edit

slap an extension (~10") on a socket wrench and worm your arm up there. Eye protection a must. Lube the bolts the night before, but don't drive it as lube will obviously burn off. When I backed off the bolts, some of the studs came with the bolts (intact, thank God - not broken off). When this happened, I pitched the bolt/stud combo and replaced with a standard one-piece hex bolt of appropriate thread (metric) and length from the hardware store. Now I don't worry about breaking studs on those particular bolts.

By jec on Wednesday, July 25, 2001 - 06:37 pm: Edit

Another possible source of the noise - the flanges are notorious for breaking off of the collector pipes. Dealer welded up one of mine when he pulled the engine a year ago. Then I just had to have both of them welded (dealer had merely tack-welded it) - I believe as a result of one of the exhaust hagar rubbers breaking and letting the exhaust system bounce around on an all-day off-road jaunt.