Exhaust Manifolds

To keep a stock look in the engine bay, I decided to use the original exhaust manifolds. They were restrictive as hell but would suffice for now. At least I had an easy part to upgrade later. Unfortunately the manifolds were really rusty and ugly.

To clean the rust I decided to dip them in acid. But not the strong stuff, just citric acid. I bough some in crystallised form and mixed it with water in about 100g of acid per litre of water. Then I left the manifolds to soak for 24 hours. Almost all of the rust had disappeared and the rest I wire brushed off.

To really make them shine I also decided to paint them. I bough some Tikkurila Termal paint and brushed it on. It was almost like water and small droplets flied everywhere. If using it, protect all surfaces carefully. The results were pretty nice at least.

The paint would only cure completely when heated to about 200 degrees celsius (390 fahrenheit) but running the engine should take care of that. The old bolts were also pretty rusty so I bought new ones. Attaching the manifolds to the engine was pretty simple but I had to shorten one bolt. The shock tower was so close to the passenger side manifold that the long bolt just would not fit.

As I had suspected the transmission support caused problems when attaching the exhaust pipe to the manifold. The pipe contacted the support and would not align with the manifold. In the end I had to create a dent to the pipe to attach them together. I'll probably have to replace the front section of the pipe later so they wont rub against each other.