After installing my exhaust manifold I realized one of the screws is missing and now the only way to re-attach it is to pull out the headers because the header pipe is flush right up against the stud.
My questions is anybody else has or had this and did the exhaust leak?
I currently have no leaks but afraid something will happen in long run. Its not an side bolt but the top one towards the middle.
Ill try to get it fixed asap and it sucks but just wanna know if anybody else had similar problem or anyone ever drove your evo with missing nut on exhaust manifold.

 

In the long run it will but you in the butt. If you have enough energy you might as well take it back off and do it so you wont have any "ghost" issues later on. I did the same with putting my stock manifold on. Put a new gasket and forgot a bolt. Maybe about 6 months later I was having spooling problems on a stock evo 8 turbo.

 

yeah I guess I gotta do it over a weekend sometime soon before I get into more problems with it.
Also since im gonna be doing that im thinking about replacing studs and bolts, whats the best place to get them at?

 

I went to Fastenal, 1.25 thread pitch.

 

anybody else missing one?

 

Yeah I sheared two of the studs taking the exhaust manifold off this weekend. The ones above the leftmost and rightmost cylinders.

I'm thinking I'm going to put the car back together without nuts on those two studs and try to drive the car to a machine shop when I get the chance to have them extract them.I don't trust myself enough to drill them out and retap the threads well and all my extraction attempts have failed.

Do you guys think there would be danger in temporarily driving with no nuts on those studs? Someone on another forum said you could burn a valve or something.

 

exhaust and boost leak, i did this for about 2 months with a broken stud. oh and bad gas mileage as the leak is before the o2 sensor. be sure to have repacement ones with you when you go to the machine shop, makes things easier after they remove the old ones to get you back on the road. also the machine shop said nothing about burnt valves when they fixed it, my head was removed as i was building it but no issues what so ever as far as valves. hope this helps.

Luis