It's been a tough few weeks for Carlos...
At the beginning of July we went away to Gran Canaria for two weeks, and literally on the day of our flight, Carlos started making a horrible rattling sound. My dad hastily called me outside to have a listen, and it sounded like the exhaust was blowing quite badly. Since we were due to fly out in a few hours, I obviously didn't get a chance to look properly. Come back two weeks later, still making the same noise, and over the course of a few days it was getting louder and a lot worse (if any of you have me on Snapchat/Instagram you may remember my story of how horrible it sounded), and quite frankly it was quite embarrassing as everyone was staring wondering what the hell the noise was.
On the ramp at work, I had a look at the front pipe, presuming it was the flexi section that had gone or perhaps the gasket for the turbo had split. Nope, both front pipe and gasket were in tact. I had a look down the back of the engine by the exhaust manifold, and bingo. Two out of five studs were snapped off and missing. Someone, at some point, had obviously either over tightened or cross threaded the studs and over time they've stretched and snapped off, which would cause the horrific blowing sound. This was a manifold/turbo off job to drill and tap the snapped studs.
So, I come to take the manifold off, and to my surprise, the last stud is weirdly very loose. Then I realised it wasn't loose, it was also snapped, but the snapped end hadn't fallen out yet. Great, three snapped studs! I didn't even want to attempt to drill and tap the studs myself, because if I did it wrong, it'd be the head I was messing up. There's a company we use at work who specalise in this kind of thing, we've used them before for a snapped glow plug and a snapped spark plug. I called them up, asked if they could do it, they said yes, all is well. Until I got a call back a day later.
"It looks like there won't be enough room to get to the studs with the engine in. The only option is to take the engine out." Oh. So what started out as a blowing exhaust has now turned into a complete engine removal, all because some 🤬 couldn't be bothered to do their job properly when putting the manifold on. Great!
Excuse the terrible photo quality, but you can (sort of) see the last three studs which are snapped, and the build up of carbon where the exhaust gases were blowing past the manifold.
Fresh new threads for the studs!
New studs, nuts, and some trusty stud lock.
Winding the stud in (
by hand so it isn't :censored:ing cross threaded) after coating the bottom few threads in stud lock (I had to take photos of this for my college portfolio, I don't normally take step-by-step photos of every job I do)
Once the stud was finger tight, I wound it in the rest of the way by tightening two nuts together and winding the outer one in.
New studs! And a rag in case I dropped anything (which I do a lot), as a loose nut or stud going inside the engine was the last thing I needed.
New exhaust manifold gasket from the dealer. It would've been about £1 cheaper if I'd ordered an aftermarket one, so for the sake of a quid I decided to go with the proper OEM thing. One stud is missing here, but that's because it wound out with the nut when I was removing the manifold. Once I put the manifold back on I'll wind the stud in as normal with some stud lock to help it stick next time.
Exhaust manifold and turbo ready to go back on. The turbo looks pretty new, so I imagine it's been replaced recently and whoever replaced it messed up the studs.
Gotta make sure your surfaces are clean!
Manifold and turbo back in place.
Shiny new studs and nuts all tightened up (correctly) in place.
That was early yesterday afternoon, and this afternoon I got the engine back in and everything back up and running. Carlos no longer sounds like a dying diesel or an embarrassing boy racer Civic! Although, slight downside, since the air con pipes had been off and back on, and slightly bent to get them in/out, as soon as I took Carlos for a drive (first time actually driving him on the road, and, uh, it's faster than the Panda...), the alternator belt rubbed on a pipe and split it, so now there's no air con. But who needs air con anyway? The Panda doesn't even have it.
Oh, and the Panda must've been jealous of Carlos and his noise making, as on the way home today the Panda's exhaust started rattling. It's like they know.
I've had to hear that rattle before, it's awful.
None at all?
interior was a tad wet.
