With a little guidance from YT I have successfully completed the first major repair on my 'new' 1988 4x4 truck - new tranny is in and shifting nicely! Oil pan is cleaned, painted, and re-sealed. There was just a tiny bit of plastic debris in the pan.

I took it for a spin just after finishing up the tranny swap, and my heart skipped a beat when I heard some bad rattling sounds... turned out to be a loose clamp on the exhaust pipe that is just floating around The clamp is supposed to be attached to some bracket that is missing.

On to my next repair: new exhaust gasket. There is an obvious leak and I can see where part of the gasket has burned out. So my plan is to take off the manifold and have it machined since I figure its probably warped at this point. Reinstall with OEM gasket / new nuts to 33 ft/lbs.

Any words of wisdom on this job? I've done battle with exhaust on other brands in the past, and with PB Blaster + blue wrench always come out on top.

My brother-in-law stopped by to check out my truck and he told me to take the manifold heat shield off and leave it off. Said it will bake the manifold and cause it to crack. Is there a consensus on this? It is against my nature to remove something like this, as I figure the Toyota engineers had a reason for putting it there (probably not to sell replacement manifolds).

Thanks!

-Josh

 

My advice...cross your fingers and hope that the studs are OK

I would leave the heat shield on, it's pretty close to the plug wires and ignitor wire to run without it. I had my manifold ceramic coated inside and out with 1600 degree coating, so I won't be running a heat shield. There's an idea for ya

www.powdercoat-it.com is where I sent mine to, $125 with a warranty and supposedly 35 degrees cooler in the engine bay, and it looks good. Or you can get a header thats already coated

 

Why not just install a header ?, you will gain a little performance it also.

 

I think I will stick with the manifold. A header (well, a good one anyway) is out of my price range right now... did I mention I just put a new tranny in the truck?

Yeah, I always have fingers and toes crossed when messing with exhaust studs. When they break it really ruins your day! There were only two bolts holding on the heat shield... the other one was 'pre-broken' off by PO... lets hope its not a sign of things to come.

I also found one of the sway bar mounting bolts had similar treatment by PO. Gonna have to drill that out someday.

Thanks for the moral support guys!

-Josh

 

The plug wires like your Heat Shield...... keep it.

 

Nice lookin header! I will keep the heat shield.

I was planning to use an OEM gasket, but then I read about Remflex gaskets. Think I am going to give it a shot... seem to be pretty well regarded on YT.

-J

 

oK, so the manifold came off without any problems. Two of the studs came out, so I cleaned them up and will lock-tight them back in.

Two questions:

The Remflex gasket I got does not have the heat shield bit riveted to it like the OEM gasket. Should I just pull that part off the old gasket and sandwich it under there?

2nd question - OK to reuse the M10 1.25 nuts? Dealer wants $3.00 per nut, and none in stock. Insanity. The nuts look OK, not real beat up.

I searched and could not find a set of these nuts online. I can get M10 1.25 nuts locally, but they are not the same design as these OEM ones.

Thanks.

-J

 

When I pulled off my warped manifold and threw on an LCE header, I knew I had some stud threads damaged, so I bought a heli coil kit. I ended up helicoiling 5 of the 8 holes, when I had planned to do one.

I can't help you on the reusing of the nuts. If they aren't damaged and you can crank em to 33 it should be fine, but I ended up ordering a new stud and nut kit with the header. And it doesn't hurt to use some copper coat, I have not had a leak since.

 

OK, putting a new manifold on... the old one was massively warped!

I've got a Remflex gasket set, but it does not have the heat shield at the top (to protect the spark plug wires). Is it OK to use the cheap one that came with the manifold, and then throw the remflex on top? Or other way around? Basically is it OK to 'stack' them?

Thanks!

-Josh

 

New manifold is on - I just used the Remflex rather than stacking gaskets. No leaks! I only torqued to 17 ft/lbs per Remflex's instructions. Only issue is I have no heat shield protecting the plug wires - need to fab something before I melt the wires. They do get rather warm!

-J