Manifold Replacement

[Joe K]

It has been my experience to consider the manifold to exhaust pipe a flare fitting: the manifold would be the male cone and the pipe the female flare. The clamp serves as the "compression nut" to bring the two parts together supposedly gas-tight.

Tight is not so tight. I found I could work the female flare with a hammer and a piece of railroad track to a better fit. IIRC, I used "layout blue" to show the high and low spots of the joint and worked (and reworked) the joint to a better fit.

I also found that reproduction clamps were decidedly inferior to a single original clamp which seemed to have deeper than the rest "compression surfaces." A couple of the reproduction clamps were decidedly "thin" in comparison with the original clamp.

So at this point I'm at a thin layer of pipe joint compound and the reworked flare/original clamp.

Joe K