Getting a '73 Swinger Back on the Road
Next up was fixing some of the exhaust leaks the car was suffering from. I tried with no success to snug of the header bolts. You could really hear it leaking right at the heads and it was bad enough you could even occasionally smell it while driving.
Luckily I didn’t order new gaskets before I unbolted the headers to take a look at what was going on. He must have made an attempt at putting in better gaskets because the ones in there were a multi-layer aluminum style.
What he didn’t realize is that it wasn’t the gaskets that were the problem. The heads from the 80’s engines have ports for the air injection just below the exhaust ports. When you no longer have the air injection, you have to close those up, otherwise they blow exhaust right out under the header flange, which is exactly what was happening
The bad part of this job was that it was no longer, unblolt the headers and pull them back just enough to slide new gaskets in. In order to tap the air injection ports for the setscrews that would plug them up, I had to completely remove the cheapo headers to have enough room to get the tap and handle in there. The passenger side was bad, but the driver’s side was downright awful. All that work for a few tiny setscrews, but it’s done now.
Moving on I replaced the lower control arm and tie rod on the passenger side because the boots were destroyed. Pretty straightforward job
Of course you may be asking “why didn’t you do the driver’s side as well?” That’s because the previous owner already did that side. Maybe he was going to get to the other side eventually? I have no idea, but again, it’s done now.
Next up was fixing some of the exhaust leaks the car was suffering from. I tried with no success to snug of the header bolts. You could really hear it leaking right at the heads and it was bad enough you could even occasionally smell it while driving.
Luckily I didn’t order new gaskets before I unbolted the headers to take a look at what was going on. He must have made an attempt at putting in better gaskets because the ones in there were a multi-layer aluminum style.
What he didn’t realize is that it wasn’t the gaskets that were the problem. The heads from the 80’s engines have ports for the air injection just below the exhaust ports. When you no longer have the air injection, you have to close those up, otherwise they blow exhaust right out under the header flange, which is exactly what was happening
The bad part of this job was that it was no longer, unblolt the headers and pull them back just enough to slide new gaskets in. In order to tap the air injection ports for the setscrews that would plug them up, I had to completely remove the cheapo headers to have enough room to get the tap and handle in there. The passenger side was bad, but the driver’s side was downright awful. All that work for a few tiny setscrews, but it’s done now.
Moving on I replaced the lower control arm and tie rod on the passenger side because the boots were destroyed. Pretty straightforward job
Of course you may be asking “why didn’t you do the driver’s side as well?” That’s because the previous owner already did that side. Maybe he was going to get to the other side eventually? I have no idea, but again, it’s done now.