Armagreggon85
Silverstone
- Joined
- 4 Jan 2017
- Messages
- 104
Hi all
I've owned my 1997 996 C2 for about 18 months now. It's pretty standard except for Castrol SRF brake fluid, GT3 front brake ducts/deflectors and currently PFC 08 brake pads ( a trip round Donington found the brakes lacking)
The car is great, especially on track, but my one issue is that it isn't 'rude' enough - my previous car was an e39 540 manual with straight pipes which sounded glorious - the 996 is just too quiet.
Having tried removing the silencers from my 996 and finding it too rude, I sourced a 2nd had pair of PSE boxes which needed a bit of welding and a 2nd hand set of stainless headers for a good price. I'm always after a bargain. The plan over the Christmas break was to whip off :floor: my current exhaust system and replace with the fruitier parts. Since I was visiting my parents over Christmas and my old man has a ramp, it seemed a good idea to tackle this there, as well as doing a service and replacing some parts while the exhaust system was off (low temp thermostat, crusty coolant pipes etc)
I thought I'd document my progress on here....
Now I've read that the manifolds are a b*tch to remove with rusty bolts and, although I'm no master mechanic, I tend to do all the maintenance on my own cars myself and I'm pretty willing to get stuck in and have a go at most things. So I started this with my eyes open, some plusgas, an oxy acetylene torch and a liberal amount of optimism - how bad could it be?
Day one
Started off pretty well, I cleaned up the pse boxes, welded the seams up and welded in a new flexi joint on one. The rear of the car was then stripped down, silencers were also removed. Lot's of the bolts and fixings were badly corroded and will need replacing.
Day two
By this point I had seen the state of the manifolds and it wasn't looking good. In the history folder that came with the car when I bought it there was a receipt from 3 years ago stating the PO had paid for the exhaust manifold bolts to be drilled out and replaced, however looking at the state of them I struggle to believe it. The top of the bolt heads were just mounds of rust and the manifold itself was in terrible condition.
(My timing chain tensioner seals are a little weepy and are on the to do list)
After all the horror stories of bolts snapping flush with the head, and the fact that there didn't appear to be anything to grip onto, I thought it would be best to drill the heads off the bolts, lower the manifold over the remaining stud and then extract the headless bolts.
I tried using a dremel to cut of the heads of the bolts but I found access was tricky and also the bolts were very hard and chewed through dremel discs at a rate of about 4 or 5 per bolt head. I go some cobalt drill bits from Machine Mart and got stuck in drilling off all the bolt heads. Most of them dropped off when you drilled far enough but those that didn't, I just hammered a socket on and when turned they twisted off. This was quite a time consuming job but I had drilled off all of the bolt heads on the drivers side manifold so I moved onto removing the manifold. This was more difficult than it sounds. With all the rust around the bolt and surrounding area, the manifold was literally corroded onto the bolt studs and no amount of yanking could budge it. There wasn't anything to lever off in that area either, our only solution was to loop a chain round the manifold and use a sledgehammer on the chain like a low tech slide hammer. It took a bit of pounding but eventually the manifold started to budge and finally dropped off.
At this point the bolts wouldn't budge so the plan was to coat the bolts in plusgas heat until glowing with the oxy acetylene torch, repeat a few times before attempting to twist out with some grips. This promptly failed miserably. The grips wouldn't budge them. I then purchase this laser stud extractor,
again from Machine Mart, which is essentially a left handed mandrel that, as you tighten it it grips onto the stud and tries to turn it, it's fantastic. Using this I got 4 of the studs out, but on two of them, the bolt just snapped flush with the head. I was resigned at this point to getting a stomski jig and drilling them out.
Moving on to the passenger side, the plan was to repeat the process, and I began drilling out the bolts laid on my back. I got about half way when, even though I was wearing a full face mask, a pesky piece of metal swarf managed to drop underneath and got stuck in my eye - off to A&E to get it removed!!!
I was getting pretty p*ssed off at this point, however when I went back to take a look at the car a couple of days later it appeared to have a coolant leakage problem around the front of the engine, on the side where I removed the manifold.
Unfortunately I had to return home at this point so the car was left at my Dad's and I borrowed a car off him. I'm now rather nervous - have I disturbed the cylinder head gasket by yanking on the manifold or worse introduced any cracks. Unfortunately the car is 150 miles away and I can't investigate further until I go back, but I'm reliably informed that there is a small coolant puddle under the car! This could be turning into a real can of worms.....
I've owned my 1997 996 C2 for about 18 months now. It's pretty standard except for Castrol SRF brake fluid, GT3 front brake ducts/deflectors and currently PFC 08 brake pads ( a trip round Donington found the brakes lacking)
The car is great, especially on track, but my one issue is that it isn't 'rude' enough - my previous car was an e39 540 manual with straight pipes which sounded glorious - the 996 is just too quiet.
Having tried removing the silencers from my 996 and finding it too rude, I sourced a 2nd had pair of PSE boxes which needed a bit of welding and a 2nd hand set of stainless headers for a good price. I'm always after a bargain. The plan over the Christmas break was to whip off :floor: my current exhaust system and replace with the fruitier parts. Since I was visiting my parents over Christmas and my old man has a ramp, it seemed a good idea to tackle this there, as well as doing a service and replacing some parts while the exhaust system was off (low temp thermostat, crusty coolant pipes etc)
I thought I'd document my progress on here....
Now I've read that the manifolds are a b*tch to remove with rusty bolts and, although I'm no master mechanic, I tend to do all the maintenance on my own cars myself and I'm pretty willing to get stuck in and have a go at most things. So I started this with my eyes open, some plusgas, an oxy acetylene torch and a liberal amount of optimism - how bad could it be?
Day one
Started off pretty well, I cleaned up the pse boxes, welded the seams up and welded in a new flexi joint on one. The rear of the car was then stripped down, silencers were also removed. Lot's of the bolts and fixings were badly corroded and will need replacing.
Day two
By this point I had seen the state of the manifolds and it wasn't looking good. In the history folder that came with the car when I bought it there was a receipt from 3 years ago stating the PO had paid for the exhaust manifold bolts to be drilled out and replaced, however looking at the state of them I struggle to believe it. The top of the bolt heads were just mounds of rust and the manifold itself was in terrible condition.
(My timing chain tensioner seals are a little weepy and are on the to do list)
After all the horror stories of bolts snapping flush with the head, and the fact that there didn't appear to be anything to grip onto, I thought it would be best to drill the heads off the bolts, lower the manifold over the remaining stud and then extract the headless bolts.
I tried using a dremel to cut of the heads of the bolts but I found access was tricky and also the bolts were very hard and chewed through dremel discs at a rate of about 4 or 5 per bolt head. I go some cobalt drill bits from Machine Mart and got stuck in drilling off all the bolt heads. Most of them dropped off when you drilled far enough but those that didn't, I just hammered a socket on and when turned they twisted off. This was quite a time consuming job but I had drilled off all of the bolt heads on the drivers side manifold so I moved onto removing the manifold. This was more difficult than it sounds. With all the rust around the bolt and surrounding area, the manifold was literally corroded onto the bolt studs and no amount of yanking could budge it. There wasn't anything to lever off in that area either, our only solution was to loop a chain round the manifold and use a sledgehammer on the chain like a low tech slide hammer. It took a bit of pounding but eventually the manifold started to budge and finally dropped off.
At this point the bolts wouldn't budge so the plan was to coat the bolts in plusgas heat until glowing with the oxy acetylene torch, repeat a few times before attempting to twist out with some grips. This promptly failed miserably. The grips wouldn't budge them. I then purchase this laser stud extractor,
again from Machine Mart, which is essentially a left handed mandrel that, as you tighten it it grips onto the stud and tries to turn it, it's fantastic. Using this I got 4 of the studs out, but on two of them, the bolt just snapped flush with the head. I was resigned at this point to getting a stomski jig and drilling them out.
Moving on to the passenger side, the plan was to repeat the process, and I began drilling out the bolts laid on my back. I got about half way when, even though I was wearing a full face mask, a pesky piece of metal swarf managed to drop underneath and got stuck in my eye - off to A&E to get it removed!!!
I was getting pretty p*ssed off at this point, however when I went back to take a look at the car a couple of days later it appeared to have a coolant leakage problem around the front of the engine, on the side where I removed the manifold.
Unfortunately I had to return home at this point so the car was left at my Dad's and I borrowed a car off him. I'm now rather nervous - have I disturbed the cylinder head gasket by yanking on the manifold or worse introduced any cracks. Unfortunately the car is 150 miles away and I can't investigate further until I go back, but I'm reliably informed that there is a small coolant puddle under the car! This could be turning into a real can of worms.....
