Exhaust leaks and effects on drivability

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Mike93

Go Sabres!!!
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The short question: how does your car respond to exhaust leaks? Mine is so finicky that the smallest leak=horrible drivability, rough idle, sluggish acceleration.

Some background with my exhaust leak experiences. I've had 3 different y-pipes on my car over the past year as the first pipe I used after the mtx swap was a well worn stock pipe off a '92. The cats were suspect and it didn't mate too well to the cat back. The result was a rough idle and poor acceleration...rough guess would be it was at 75% of full power. I hated this pipe and if metal could burn I would have done so.

Next up was a ShoShop high-flow Y I borrowed from RJ-92 (Ron). This pipe performed amazing! Pulled much harder, smooth idle, the car flat out ripped!....however this changed a few weeks later when the new found power in the exhaust blew a small dime sized hole where the cat back meets the end of the Y!!! It was on the cat back side...and from this small hole the car could barely drive, felt like it was on 4 of the 6 cyliners. Welded it up and the car ripped again.

Moving on...I had to give the pipe back and I picked up a Summit pipe. I noticed the flanges on the manifold end of the pipe are much smaller than the other two pipes and I have small leak here I believe. The cat back end also doesn't mate up too well to the cat back. I plan to remove the pipe and expand the ****** openings to get a better fit and have an exhaust shop fix the y-pipe to cat back seal with new hardware.
 

TrueBlue

Rocket Surgeon
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Here too. The small exhaust leak at the collector seems to let the engine fluctuate up and down at times. My old Vulcan Taurus had holes the size of quarters and it ran fine - aside from being very loud.
 

SHOblime

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AFAIK it takes a pretty good leak to affect idle, etc... unless it's ahead of the 02 sensors....isn't it just like running an open header?
 

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