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Car Forum / Driving, Maintenance, Tuning / Maintenance and Repair / November 2007Exhaust Clamp Frustration
I'm replacing a broken exhaust clamp on my 85 Chevy Caprice. It's going onto the pipes in front of the cat converter. I was tightening it up tighter and tighter, and the 2 pipes never tightened up on each other. I could still turn the cat pipe over the header pipe easily, and there was still some exhaust blowing out of the space between the pipes. Just how tight do you have to make these things? I don't want to keep tightening, then hear "snap!", or "brang!" and have one of the pipes get messed up. The pipe on the cat is supposed to be squeezed down by the clamp onto the header pipe, making a seal, right ??? The clamp is supposedly the right size. 2.25 inch. It fits on nize and snug. I could just keep tightening and tightening, I guess, but it's already pretty tight. Thanks > I'm replacing a broken exhaust clamp on my 85 Chevy Caprice. It's > going onto the pipes in front of the cat converter. I was tightening [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Thanks I've never been able to make a "perfect" seal with a u-clamp, especially when one of the pipes is used. If you never plan on taking the connection apart again, use muffler epoxy on the joint, then assemble, tighten clamp, and finally tack weld pipes into place. If you think you may want to disassemble in the future, follow the same steps but use high-temp silicone instead of the muffler epoxy. I say tack weld rather than a full weld because then you can just grind them off later, but the clamp alone is seldom enough to keep the pipes from shifting WRT each other unless you get the clamp tight enough to crimp the pipes together, in which case you will NEVER get them apart. nate > I'm replacing a broken exhaust clamp on my 85 Chevy Caprice. It's > going onto the pipes in front of the cat converter. I was tightening [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Thanks My experience with muffler clamps is you have to go back and forth from one bolt to the other to get it tightened down evenly. Is it possible it's too big and you've bottomed out/stripped it? Maybe your exhaust is only 2 1/8 or 2" instead of 2 1/4. It's also possible that the pipes are rotten at the joint, and there's a pinhole (or larger) leak that you'll not be able to fix with anything short of a proper repair, because all you're doing is crushing rotted exhaust pipe. (been there, done that.) ray's $1 fix: Take a beer/coke/soup can, slit it lengthwise, cover the inside with muffler cement and slide it over the pipe. Use a couple of muffler clamps and/or hose clamps. It'll probably hold for about a month to a year before burning through. Ray In 1990, I was using some J B Weld on something unrelated to my 1978 Dodge van.I had a little dab of J B Weld left over and just for the heck of it, I put that little dab of J B Weld on the top of my van's tail pipe.I haden't bothered to clean off that top area near the end of the tailpipe,I just sloshed the J B Weld on to the tailpipe with a screwdriver.It is still there after 17 years as good as new.Maybe some J B Weld will fill up the gap in your exhaust pipe.A few years ago, I was painting my house and the neighbor's black cat got a little too close to my paint brush.Just for the heck of it, I painted a white racing stripe on that cat's back. cuhulin Thanks for the ideas and info. My plan at this point is to put the new clamp on, as tightly as I feel safe with, then just cover up the gap between the pipes with some "muffler weld" putty, which I can break off easily enough if I need to reomove the cat ever. I have to get the car past inspection in the next 2 months. I got my other car past inspection with the putty in a small area of the exhaust, so I'll probably be OK again. > Thanks for the ideas and info. > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > I got my other car past inspection with the putty in a small area of > the exhaust, so I'll probably be OK again. I actually use the putty inside the joint, but then again I don't plan on taking it apart. If you do need to, you can cut two slits in the outside pipe and peel it back with an air chisel, obviously this will destroy it however. nate Muffler shops have (some of them do anyway) several different sizes of exhust pipe expanders.(for lack of what I know what those tools are called,,,, exhaust pipe expanders?) They are used for increasing the outside diameter of exhaust pipes that are a little too small in diameter so that the ''too small'' exhaust pipe will match up properly with another exhaust pipe, muffler or whatever. cuhulin Update on exhaust clamp. I went to two exhaust shops and asked them what they thought. They assured me that I couldn't damage anything by tightening up a lot more on the clamp. So, even though I was a bit skeptical, I did just that, and luckily the thing tightened up just fine without crimping the pipes or stripping the threads on the u bolt, the pipes are tight together and no more exhaust leak. |
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