5 replies to this topic

[-Bowler-]

Well with 158k on the old girl and 9 years of daily snotting, I’m finally facing some serious costs...

With it 6 feet in the air on a mate's ramp, I’ve spent a couple of hours under it this afternoon. Had a good mooch around and although I've avoided this so far, It's time to put my hand in my pocket. Not unexpected, given the age of the car

Brake lines at the back are an MOT failure, but I can sort that.

Front brake discs are borderline dangerous, but that’s not the reason for this post

Main issue is that I wanted to change the Sump Gasket, but all the fasteners holding the Y-Pipe to the Headers and the Cat are fucked – like really corroded to bollocks! Although I had the intention of removing it to do the gasket, It was fairly clear that I was not going to remove the nuts, without rounding them or shagging the studs, so I abandoned the job to think again.

It looks like I’m going to have to be prepared to drill out the Spline bolts on the Y-Pipe and replace. If I do this, then I need advice...

Does anyone know:-

What thread size are the existing spline bolts?

I can buy new manifold bolts online, but what thread size are they?

Any recommended suppliers (online)?

Thanks in advance

Edited to add: I see that there is now something called a Maniflod! Opps...

[HuntDerek]

I can't offer any advice but I wish you good luck.

Curious, do these cars have a sump gasket or is a filler?

[-Bowler-]

It's a gasket. Aluminium, about 3mm thick with a soft rubber/silicon beading on the inboard edge They are about £45 from any Ford dealer

For those that are interested, I've subsequently learnt that all the studs from the headers back inc those holding the exhaust together are all M10

I've set aside a full day in 2 weeks time (with the car on a lift) to sort this problem. If I remember, I'll take some pictures

[HuntDerek]

Good luck. I would like tosee the pictures.

[-Bowler-]

Well, I did it....

I got the car on a buddies 2-post lift, so it was 6ft in the air. He also had some proper kit to help....

As mentioned above, the nuts on the manifold studs to the Y-pipe were really solid and my mate was worried that we'd break the studs with excessive (breaker bar) force, so we

1) Left the 3rd cat alone, as the nuts and studs were completely fucked

2) Got an oxy/acetyline blowtorch jobby on the (Y-pipe) manifold nuts and got them cherry red

3) With a bit of heat, cracked them with no problem, but unscrewed them very carefully because of the heavy corrosion on the studs

4) Took the the complete exhaust system (back from the manifolds) off in one - 2 man job as it's heavy and fiddly as a single piece

After that, access to the sump is a piece of cake. All the sump studs flew off but you need a deep 15mm socket. Cleaned the sump, in and out (160k on it and no oil sludge!) and refitted as per the Haynes manual

Finally, re-fitted the exhaust, using new stainless nuts to the manifold (not the proper Ford ones though as we were worried about the mainfold studs being weak)

I can't say how long it took, as we were messing around with brake lines at the same time (I'll post a new thread) but start to finsih it took 6 hours

In any case, I wouldn't recommend doing this job lying on your back, as it would be a real PITA to get the exhaust/Y-pipe off

Took some piccies, which I will post at some point

HTH

[thegfb]

I recently did this job on my Mk2 (more or less identical) to remove the sump, and my y-pipe to header studs/nuts were awful too.

Luckily I was replacing the pipe with a stainless part with new nuts and bolts, so I just cut through the studs - still caused me a lot of agro though doing it with the car on stands!