Small exhaust leak

[Kyle97-clipse]

I searched but really couldnt find anything close to my problem. I have a very small exhaust leak where my headers meet the downpipe. It is a little unaligned there because the kid had the downpipe bent to fit a turbo manifold he had on when the car was turbo. I did replace the gasket there and it sealed it up better. It is not leaking much at all now but still very slightly. I want to know if this could be causing any performance losses at all?? Thanks

 

[Fotowntalon]

as long as its after the first 02 sensor and your not boosted, i couldnt see it causing much of a problem, got any CEL codes?

 

[rstare]

It will slightly affect scavenging effect.

 

[Kyle97-clipse]

as long as its after the first 02 sensor and your not boosted, i couldnt see it causing much of a problem, got any CEL codes?

Yes I do have some CEL codes and one is for the oxygen sensor its code 21

It will slightly affect scavenging effect.

What is the scavenging effect?

 

[Achelea]

It's how the engine uses exhaust pulses for efficiency.

For the purposes of this explanation, I will use Pressure as positive pressure, and Vacuum as negative.

As each cylinder fires, it creates pressure, and when the valve opens, the pressure heads out into the manifold, when the valve closes, the exhaust air still has momentum and creates a vacuum inside the manifold, when the next pulse happens, it helps move the exhaust out of the cylinder by having a higher differential pressure between the cylinders and the manifold. This slight vacuum helps pull more of the exhaust out, and in turn, helps bring More of the fuel air charge into the cylinder. It helps scavenge all of exhaust from the cylinder.

That help?

 

[Kyle97-clipse]

Yeah thanks Acheala but you don't think that a very small leak would cause any noticable loss of hp or anything, the leak used to be significant but I fixed that and now it is only slight

 

[Mitsu RacerX]

Take it off and see if any shop can stitch weld it for you. Shouldn't cost no more than 10 to 20 dollars..Then problem fixed..

 

[Kyle97-clipse]

Yeah either that or I'm thinking about heating it up with a torch and then bending it slightly back to where it was and then it will seal up nicely