Little Red Turbo Creeper

Any luck with looking for exhaust leaks?

I know I've got at least one still

 

Yea, had a pretty bad one on that driver side crossover connection. Through some cooper gasket in there to hopefully make it better... also had leaks at both sensors so gasketed them up as well. Haven't driven it yet since that but will hopefully have better numbers tomorrow!

 

I hope you see improvement.

Getting those to seal is probably going to be the key to the P0420.

The CX Pipes are definitely not ready to install out of the box. I spent forever on the drivers side flanges and that was the "easy side"

What type of copper gasket did you go with. I was just thinking about the spray can stuff I bought and never used

I tried to use different C clamps on the crossover pipe but none of the ones I bought seemed to fit very well compared to what came in the box. Keeping them in place while tightening it down is a pain with the (not so) flat flanges.

 

I used this:

I have the spray too but figured the sttuff pictured would be better to apply heavier coat.

As for the CX stuff, yea I should have been better about getting them sured up but working with the limited space we have it was hard. Definetaly have thought about pulling the engine at some point in the future to possibly weld it all together to make sure there is no leaks . My wastegate flange also has a bit of a leak as well, but letting that one ride for now as I only have those 5 units more to get under the threshold.

 

The flanges are nice and thick so it would be easy to weld that shut, was one of the first thought I had when the Doug Thorley headers were leaking. how often do they need to come off anyways

 

Yeah that's what I kinda figured too haha

So you pull the trigger on the haltech stuff yet?

 

I took a big step in that direction this morning

 

Sweet! Excited to see the progress!

 

It'll be slow and probably painful

 

It should be much less painful that you imagine. Honestly. @BassAckwards was quite apprehensive. We walked through it with some minor headaches, and got it started!

 

Plus, there is the 1st Gen Haltech thread. Lots of knowledge in there.

 

It's a good thread indeed.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't apprehensive but that's part of pushing the boundaries of what we know.

It's like playing a new boardgame, Everyone explains the rules but nothing really makes sense until you pick up the pieces and start playing. But if I play my cards right and cheat off everyone else's we should be fine.

 

Very accurate.

 

Welp, no dice on my emissions. Failed again this morning, sealing up those joints didn't do anything... 137 units of 125 now so got worse essentially... bit at a lose now.

Still have a bit of a leak at the wastegate, which makes me wonder if that is why I get some AFR hunting at the beginning of each drive... but maybe its enough to cause the P0420 I'm getting as well. The sensor was known good last year when I passed stock, so I don't think its a sensor issue. Just too many variables and anything im trying doesn't seem to do much at all...

 

I fought the P0420 for quite a while, and turned out to be my cat needed replace. Might be the case for you?

 

If they're only sniffing and no visual test, maybe it would help to toss a couple cheapo aftermarket cats inline before and after the stocker to help shore up your results and then just take em off after the test.

 

These are my old stock cats that I welded up a test pipe, and put back on instead of my 3" straight pipe and high flow cat. So my theory is that everything passed last year on this stock set up, the cats haven't been ran since they passed last year either... so I am not quite sure what's wrong. Emissions tests (Torque Pro app data is what I am going off of here) appeared to get better after I put the stock test pipe on too, but still wasn't under the 125 max threshold, so checked for some exhaust leaks and sealed them up better, but the emissions checks then got worse which just isn't making sense to me.

My thinking is that the wastegate leak is causing more issues than I am giving it credit, or the rear o2 sensor is compromised having ran it for a year in the straight pipe high flow cat set up which also returned P0420 code but with much higher emission numbers ( 160+ of the 125 threshold ).

 

No sniffing, its visual and OBDII plug in but because the P0420 is throwing a CEL it is an auto fail. Problem is the variability in the results isn't making much sense, first check after sealing up exhaust leaks was at 162, then today's it dropped to 137 ( 2 failed checks in a row is what pops the CEL) but that is still higher than before sealing up the leaks...

 

I'd be delighted to have the P0420 go away for both of us.

Maybe just adding one more cat to the system would be enough.

Maybe a little bit of cleaner burning fuel?

Do we know what particular gas its reading too much of?

 

Not a clue, I don't know what the units of measure are from the Torque app unfortunately.