Hey Guys ChrisFix Here!
And today I am going to show you how to find an
Exhaust Leak in your car or truck
After we find the leak
I am going to show you how to seal it and repair it.
Without using a welder,
That way you can do this at home, Inexpensively.
Using Common Products.
You can find these products
At Your local stores,
And they are very easy to use, they're Very cheap.
and you can do this quickly.
Now I just bought this mustang
But It's not for me, it's actually for a friend of mine.
I bought it for them because they need a car desperately
And What better car for me to get
Than a Mustang, Which I know inside and out.
Now I got this car for a steal because
It has faded paintwork, and because the owner couldn't find the exhaust leak.
And It sounds Horrible, other wise the car is in great shape, the engine has 130,000 miles on it,
The conditioner works, it has a brand new battery brand-new tires some nice wheels
and the interior is in pretty good shape it's gonna be nice to drive so really
the only thing wrong with this car is it has a loud exhaust leak I mean listen
to this
*turns on car*
*car's exhaust sounds*
not only is this leak loud and it sounds bad especially when you're driving and
giving it gas when you have an exhaust leak like this it could cause check
engine lights to come on you can lose fuel economy and the engine just doesn't
run right sometimes. Also I could smell it already there are fumes coming into
the cabin and you don't want to be breathing those in. So this is the
perfect car for me to show you guys how to find exhaust leaks and then fix them
and finding them is the hardest part but don't worry I have a really cool process
it's an awesome method I came up with on how to find them easily you don't even
need to have the car running and then once we find them I'll show you how to
seal it up and here all the tools and products you could use to do this
So first we need to find the leak and in order to do that you're going to be
using a leaf blower a Shop Vac or an air compressor. Anything to push air into the
exhaust create a positive pressure inside the exhaust system then we're
gonna grab our soapy water all this is is dish soap and water all you want to
do is get something that's gonna get really sudsy so where the air is
escaping you're going to see bubbles and that's how you pinpoint the leak
once you pinpoint the leak we have three different products to use to seal the
leak. First we have our putties, this is like a play-doh you push it into the
crack or the leak and then it hardens like steel. Then we have our muffler
bandage, which is like an ace bandage you wrap around the muffler and then it
seals it off and gets really hard as well, and finally, we have our exhaust
band clamp, which goes over the damaged area and seals it off when you tighten
it down. This will pretty much cover everything that you need to fix your
exhaust. The only extra bits that you're going to need are some gloves, some tape,
some sandpaper and a metal wire brush these are good because this is going to
help you clean the area before you apply your fix and I will be sure to link all
these products down below in the description so you could easily find
them once you figure out what's gonna be the right product for you, you easily
check it out find it and order it so you can fix your exhaust and speaking of
fixing exhaust let's go get started fixing the exhaust on this Mustang and
first we need to find where that leak is coming from. Since the leak is near the
front I'm gonna use ramps to safely lift the front of the car up for easy access
and with the front end lifted up it's always a good idea to get some wood and
chalk off the rear wheels so it doesn't roll and now we are ready to pressurize
the exhaust system so we have to come to the rear of the car and on this Mustang
since it's a V6 it only has a single exit exhaust
right here now I'm gonna be using my shop vac to pressurize the exhaust so
just shove that hose up into the tailpipe and tape it so it doesn't come
out good now since this is a vacuum we do need to switch our hose around from
the front and now when we turn this on it blows air into the exhaust instead of
vacuuming so we are good to go one flip of the switch and we have a positive
pressure going into our exhaust and we're able to find where that leak is
now not every car has a single exit exhaust some cars like my Mustang here
has a dual exit exhaust so what you would do here I'll use the leaf blower
as an example you get your leaf blower and you mount it up into the exhaust tip
like that and then for the other tip nice and simple get a nitrile glove and
fit it around the exhaust to seal it and then tape it off like so so now you know
how to pressurize the exhaust with a dual exhaust end on a single exhaust I'm
gonna shut this off and let's go turn this one on and find our exhaust leak
and since our leak sounds like it's coming from the front I'm gonna go start
by checking up by the engine and one thing I should mention is you want the
engine to be completely cold you don't want a hot engine you're gonna be
spraying soapy water on the exhaust you're also forcing cooler air into the
exhaust and when you cool things down quickly they could warp or crack and you
wouldn't want that so the first thing to do with a cold engine is grab your soapy
water and spray down the entire exhaust manifold and don't be afraid to use a
lot of soapy water you can never use too much what you're gonna be looking for is
bubbling which is caused by air escaping through a hole and that's where your
leak is and right away you could clearly see where the exhaust is bubbling we
have a leak at the front of the exhaust we have a leak right over here and just
as I figured it's super common we have a week at the manifold flange and there we
go is that simple to find exhaust leaks we found three on this side but don't
stop there you want to check the other side as well so grab your soapy water
we're gonna come around here and I'm gonna remove this intake I already
loosened it up and we're gonna go check out the exhaust on this side so again
spray it down and get it completely soaked and I'm not seeing any leaks at
all so this side looks good I don't see any bubbles which means we don't have
leaks now there's one more thing I want to check and it's the exhaust underneath
the car so slide under the car and we have two exhaust pipes we need to check
for leaks and I think you get it by now you need to spray everything down
with soapy water concentrate on the spots that have welds or that they have
the flange or the connectors here because a lot of times those spots are
the ones that'll leak so make sure you get that soaking wet and look for air
bubbles and after spraying down these two exhaust pipes completely I don't see
any leaks at all under the car and that's always a good thing all right so
after spraying down the entire exhaust the only leaks that we could find are
the three leaks over by the exhaust manifold on the driver side and at the
flange there and I'm gonna show you how to easily seal those leaks but first
real quick I have a muffler out here actually this is the muffler from my
Mustang and the reason why I have it here is because I want to show you
something there's a small hole in many stock mufflers you could see that hole
right there that is from the factory and it's designed to allow water to leak out
when the car is not running that way it doesn't collect in here and then rust
and create an even bigger hole so if you spray down the exhaust and you find
yourself a hole at the end of the muffler leave it don't seal it up I
wanted to explain that real quick because that's pretty important now we
do have holes in our exhaust that we do need to seal up and let me show you how
we're gonna do it and to seal them we're gonna be using a high-temperature
exhaust putty this is specifically designed for the exhaust manifolds and
exhaust pipes that get very hot you can see here it can withstand 2,400 degrees
of continuous heat and it's great for exhaust manifolds tailpipes mufflers you
get the idea and before we apply this we need a prep our exhaust manifold to do
that grab some sandpaper or a metal wire brush and we're gonna clean away all the
loose dirt and rust and scratch that metal surface anywhere we're gonna apply
the putty that way the putty has a nice surface to bond to so after you send the
area around the exhaust leaks get some isopropyl alcohol on a towel get a
little bit on there and we're gonna wipe down the areas we just sanded to clean
them up make sure it's free of any dust grease or dirt that way we could get a
good bonding surface alright so with everything cleaned with the alcohol we
are ready to seal those exhaust leaks with our putty actually one real quick
tip that's super helpful take the hose out of the vacuum and flip it around so
now the vacuum can suck the air out of the exhaust and this little trick is
gonna make our repair that much better because now the air is getting sucked in
so when we add our putty that putty is gonna get pulled and drawn into the
holes and the cracks that's causing the exhaust leak it's going to give us a
better seal also I don't know if you could hear it now but there's air
hissing from the air getting sucked in when we seal it up that air shouldn't be
hissing anymore and that means we sealed all the leaks
so let's remove the cat and activate the putty by stirring it good so it's a
consistent paste similar to the look of concrete just like that now let's apply
it to the spots that are leaking be sure to press it into the areas that are
leaking and then add more putty in the area around that so that you could seal
that weak in good repeat this process with the other leaking areas and the
flange down here is definitely the biggest leak so use a lot of putty and
pack it in there I'm gonna be pressing in the putty around the entire flange
and you can actually hear that week getting sealed up beautiful alright and
you can hear that hissing noise has stopped which means we sealed up the
exhaust now the biggest leak was definitely coming from that exhaust
flange at the bottom and I bet you that's where most of the exhaust noise
was coming from and just to give you an idea we did end up using basically all
the putty to fix those leaks also if you do get the putty on something that you
don't want it on all you have to do is grab some soapy water spray it down and
wipe it off while it's still wet and it comes right off now what we need to do
is let that cure this could take anywhere from 2 to 24 hours depending on
how hot it is outside the hotter it is the quicker it'll cure and that means
you can use something like a heat gun or a hair dryer to heat that up and make it
cure faster but whatever you do do not start that engine the positive pressure
from the exhaust will blow out all that putty and all that work you just did was
waste it so now we just need to let this dry and as we let it dry I'm gonna shut
the vacuum off and remove the hose from the exhaust pipe because we don't want
to start up the car with that in there and as we let that cure there are still
two more methods on sealing up a leaking exhaust and I want to show you those
real quickly the first ones using an exhaust clamp and the second one is
using a heat rap and I'm going to show you both of these methods on my truck so
let's go underneath so here is my trucks exhaust and I don't have any holes in
the exhaust but as you guys know I like to show you proof that what I do
actually works so I'm gonna cut a nice hole with my plasma cutter and you can
think of this as a hole in your exhaust system that was created by rust no other
rust hole like this you have two main options you could go with an exhaust
clamp like that this will clamp real tight and it'll seal it off or you could
go with an exhaust bandage or an exhaust wrap like this and you just wrap it
around almost like if you wrap duct tape or black tape around here except this is
designed to take the heat first I'm gonna show you the exhaust clamp all you
have to do is wrap clamp around add the two bolts in and
then tighten them down so it's lamps hard and covers the hole
but check it out with my truck running and a little bit of soapy water you can
see there are no leaks at all and since this is stainless steel
it'll outlast your exhaust and then the last option is the exhaust wrap option
but in order to do this you want the exhaust to be hot so start the car up
and run the engine until the exhaust is almost too hot to handle let's see if
it's hot oh yeah that is definitely hot and then there's clear tape on both
sides that you want to remove which reveals the really sticky surface now
you want to wrap this around the exhaust as flat as possible overlapping about an
inch it's a little tricky especially in tight areas because it wants to stick to
everything but once you get the method down it's not that bad and be sure to
keep it nice and taut too it creates a tight seal and that looks pretty good
beautiful now the instructions do say to run the car but I'm not gonna do that I
don't like the idea of having a positive pressure which could just blow this out
and then you can get leaks so instead I have a heat gun and I'm just gonna run
this heat gun back and forth for a few minutes until it hardens so now this is
solid as a rock and if we start the truck up you can see there are no
bubbles there's no air escaping and it's quiet so we seal that giant hole and
that was a large rust hole so that's a pretty good fix so now you've seen the
three methods on how to repair your exhaust without a welder you guys should
be experts by now now it's been about two hours since we did the Mustang and I
do have a little bit of help here for the last 15 minutes I've been using a
heat gun just to make sure it's cured and to verify that this is completely
cured all you got to do is get your fingernail and try to indent the putty
it should not indent it should feel solid as steel if it does indent then
you want to make sure that you heat it up or let it dry longer in this case
this isn't indenting so we are ready to test out the car start er up and see if
we sealed up the leak all right moment of truth this is the part that gets me
excited and nervous at the same time did we fix it beautiful it is quiet and that
is what I'm talking about listen to that it's so quiet I don't hear the exhaust
anymore it doesn't sound loud and embarrassing and I don't smell the
exhaust fumes because we sealed it up here's the before
and here's the after before and after and that is how you find an exhaust leak
and then seal it up really quickly really easily
not counting the cure time this took me a total of about 15 to 20 minutes and
it's cheap to do all these products are inexpensive I'll be sure to link the
products in the description and just so you know I've done this on my truck
about six years ago and it's still sealed up and it still works fine so it
is a long-term fix it's nice to be able to do this stuff at home without a
welder so hopefully the video was helpful if it was remember to give it a
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