Warped Td5 exhaust manifold whats the answer

[landypc]

Dear all,

Happy New Year.

Not me thankfully but a mates got a warped Td5 exhaust manifold and the studs have snapped.

I've searched and apart form going back to Land Rover and buying a new manifold and studs I don't know.

A second hand one could be pouring money down the drain and get one in a similar condition. It's not until you put an engineers steel across it that you see the extent of the warping.

Alive tuning do a ceramic coated manifold.

IRB do a stainless tubular manifold

Others say cut out the webbing between the flanges and use some kind of modified stud. Again I've searched for the stud and can't find anything.

The manifolds from Alive & IRB are an arm and a leg @ £455.00 & £799.00 with a standard one at almost £300.00.

can anything be done with the old one, like removing the webbing and refacing the manifold.

I'm at a loss on this one guys and dolls.

Has anyone had the problem and what was the or their answer.

He aint got the money for a standard one let alone some kind of modified one.

Usual replies please

Cheers everyone

landypc

[Porny]

Refaced manifold (I offer these on an exchange basis - skimmed, blasted and slightly modified). I also supply an uprated stud and spacer kit if needed... which do help manifold survive.

Removing webbing makes no difference in my experience...

Is your Td5 tuned?

Ian

[landy andy.]

When mine went, I removed, ground out the webbing in-between, and had it refaced, cost was about £40.

I then removed broken studs from cylinder head, drilled and retapped these to a lager size, (I did this for the two studs at each end port), i then replaced all the rest of the studs with new items. Fitted new gasket (had to drill bigger holes for larger studs x4). Then rebuilt, drilling manifold also for larger four studs. Did 500 or so miles retighten.

I did order some special studs and spacers from Jeremy Fern, (who I think also does exchange manifolds), but I did not fit these due to them arriving late.

The important thing is to get your manifold machined flat, don't buy a unwarped one as it will warp, yours has done it's warping, so make it flat and refit. If you can afford use posh studs or bolts, in place of originals, great, but if you can't you can't.

Oh and it's an easy job to remove and refit manifold, just take your time, and be methodical.

Andy

[Off Road Toad]

I'm in agreement with Andy, have yours re-faced by a machine shop, it won't be expensive and refit it. But you should look at your exhaust gas temps, if its a standard tune then somethings amiss.

Steve

[vulcan bomber]

send it to me if you want it skimming, should be enough to sort them.

What happens is the manifold gets hot, cools at its own pace and stress relieves its self... Once its warped once, it wont go again.

[landypc]

Dear all,

Let me get it right.

Once warped it stays warped and wont warp again....say that when ya Mildly miffed. Get it refaced. reassemble using new gaskets and modified studs. Job done.

Where do you get the modified studs from and who sells em. I've looked at all the major diesel tuning sites, nothing. Every one mentions J E Engineering and Jeremy Fearn but their sites don't show anything. I've even checked E Bay

cheers

landypc

[Off Road Toad]

here you go http://portal.jeengineering.co.uk/defender/diesel-engines.html about two thirds down the page £47.00

Steve

[landypc]

Dear Off Road Toad,

I went to spec savers, clearly they're no good.

Nuff said lets hope my mate doesn't break a stud when he's doing the work.

Once again the font of knowledge for Land Rovers has helped. I'm sure dealers check this site out for help.....

Cheers

landypc

[landy andy.]

Off road toad is correct, and my studs came from JE Engineering, not J Fern, sorry.

But Ian/porny also does his own version as he mentioned above.

Be very careful when removing the broken studs screw them in first, until they gently bottom out, then clean thread out with tap, then extract. Learnt this the hard way, possibly learnt this method on here? I drilled hole the used extractor broke that the hammered in a torx bit, worked well.

Good luck, any questions just ask.

Andy

[JimAttrill]

Just to add to all the above, in our garage we would, as a matter of course, throw away the LR studs and replace them with Würth Mercedes-Benz studs which are exactly the same size and do NOT break. Not expensive, either.

Another clever trick we had was to buy a left-handed 6mm drill bit (yes, you can get left-handed drill bits ). When used in a reversible air drill, very often the broken ends of studs would come out without having to use an extractor.

[110scott]

Refaced manifold (I offer these on an exchange basis - skimmed, blasted and slightly modified). I also supply an uprated stud and spacer kit if needed... which do help manifold survive.

Removing webbing makes no difference in my experience...

Is your Td5 tuned?

Ian

How can one purchase your EGR blank kit?

[aaronjp1990]

How can one purchase your EGR blank kit?

Keep trying him and you will get him eventually! or try Ada his numbers on there page.

[110scott]

Keep trying him and you will get him eventually! or try Ada his numbers on there page.

Ok will do thanks for your help.

[ragerover]

ive had the same problem a few times yes my egt is higher but im pushing more hot gas through thanks porny

ive tried all of the above but have ended up with a mixture of all

skim manifold

remove webs make sure you radius all corners to stop it cracking

change the studs to merc ones

i also drilled out the holes in the manifold slightly larger ( this is a trick used by the rally teams in days of old ie mk1 escorts) it allows the manifold to move slightly on heating and cooling and stops it snapping studs but not enough to blow gaskets

i thought about ceramic coating there`s a place in Edinburgh that will do it cheap, but to my thinking that will hold heat in and not let it escape it will increase flow though

im runnung very high boost and the egt is high and i thrash the tits off it and no problem since the mods

if i was going for outright power id buy a tubular from porny might do yet but im skint

[steve200TDi]

Just to add to all the above, in our garage we would, as a matter of course, throw away the LR studs and replace them with Würth Mercedes-Benz studs which are exactly the same size and do NOT break. Not expensive, either.

Another clever trick we had was to buy a left-handed 6mm drill bit (yes, you can get left-handed drill bits ). When used in a reversible air drill, very often the broken ends of studs would come out without having to use an extractor.

Do you have a part number for these studs as I might think about fitting a set as my manifold has warped.

Thanks

Steve

[JimAttrill]

They are in the Würth catalogue as "mercedes-benz studs". I don't remember a part number and the catalogue is where I used to work on Landys. Sorry.

[Dalejo]

Hi, probably a silly question but how do you know if you've got this problem?

[steve200TDi]

You'll hear the manifold blowing.

There will be black deposits around the gasket.

Steve

[jabber]

Fleabay has the wurth exhaust studs in question. Picked up a set myself.

[stanleysteamer]

Hi all

I have this problem and I do not want to risk trying to get out the studs that are fine and then breaking them. So if they are not bust I am not going to fix them! So far I have one broken one I will need to drill out and replace and possibly another where I will have to go to 10 mm.  Once I have got the manifold remachined, I will be drilling out the 1 and 5 port holes to 10mm and the 3 and  4 port holes to 9 mm but tell me, what is the harm in putting good strong washers between the nut and the manifold?  Would that not allow the manifold to move the tiny bit it needs without losing clamping power?  This used to be normal practice on many vehicles.

Looking forward to your ideas.

[stanleysteamer]

Ok, have since nearly got the manifold off, but ran into the following problem.  All nuts off, odd one or two studs came with the nuts.  Now I have got it moving but it does not want to come right off. Admittedly I had to leave it and do something else, so with a bit more persuasion, i.e. hammering and leverage, it may come off, but I am thinking I may be reduced to removing more studs, if not all of them.  I am putting this difficulty down to the manifold being so warped, the holes around the remaining studs are locking on to the studs, but then it could just be rust.

All good fun! But worth mentioning to others who may think that just getting the nuts off will be the end of their problems!

Will keep you posted.

[stanleysteamer]

Hi gang. Update on this issue.  I cannot remember if I did remove any more studs before getting the manifold off but yes, not only was it warped but the two end ports had moved in the vertical plane, when mounted, hence the difficulty in getting it over the studs. Anyway, with a bit of persuasion and a lot of language it came off.  Went to the engineers who only grind cast on a Friday (lol!) Had to pay extra as it was so warped it had to be on the machine  longer, £60 in all.

In the interim I cleaned up and ran a thread nut down the studs that came out, I also cleaned up the nuts.  I then had a look at the holes where the missing studs had been.  I found that 8mm bolts would still go down them so hunted around in my old stocks of stuff and miraculously found two studs.  Lord knows where they came from, a Pinto engine possibly, anyway, cleaned up the threads and I was good to go. 

Having read this thread I got myself a set of lef-thand threaded drill bits and a good set of extractor/easy outs.  Started small on the one stud that had broken off.  Luckily, as my centre punch was slightly off centre when I tried to put a little dink in the end of the stud. Which had broken off just below flush with the head.  Was able to recentre the hole with the tiny drill bit, then went up in size of bit until I got to the point where I thought I might risk using an extractor.  Now the drill bits came in all sorts of weird sizes, and the extractor instructions said exactly the diameter and depth of hole needed to successfully extract.  Guess what, I did not have a left-hand drill bit of the right size.  So was forced to use a 5.5mm conventional drill bit.  And using that the stud suddenly decided to go with the drill bit, further into the head.  Whoopee do. 

By now it was beyond the threaded part of the hole and totally inaccessible with the "easyout".  I determined that it was going to be possible to screw a new stud into the existing hole if I could clear the threads, as of course, the remains of the stud had broken off from the drilled part as it went deeper into the head.  So, I drilled extremely carefully in the hole moving up the range of bit sizes as far as I dare, then I got an 8 mm tap and went down the hole, as far as I dared, hoping that I would not break the tap, or strip the thread.  Fortunately this worked. Huge sigh of relief.

So, with a lot of redrilling and filing of the mounting holes on the manifold, I eventually got it to fit over the studs, ditto the gasket.  Feeling elated I went and got the torque wrench and, like a good boy, started in the middle and went round in a spiral pattern.  To find that the top stud on number one cylinder, closest the rad, was going round and round.

Fed up especially since the missus is in hospital and would have liked me to be able to go and pick her up in the Disco as she has had an op on her hip which would make it more difficult for her to be moved in our other car.

What I am going to try and do is to remove the stud with two locked nuts, drill the hole out to whatever it needs for a tap for 10mm, tap it and fit a bolt.  Stupid thing resisted fine as I was doing it up without the torque wrench.  Lesson learned.  Hope to heaven I never have to do another one but anyone else doing it needs to put a spacer of some sort (a bigger nut for instance) over each stud and then put a nut on it and torque it to the correct torque before messing around with replacing the manifold.  Only way I suppose to really find any hidden weaknesses in the threads.

I HATE aluminium heads!!!!

Probably due to once owning a Dolomite Sprint, what a nightmare that was!

Hope someone somewhere is benefiting from my mistakes!

Will finish this once it is all done.  Wish me luck! 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by stanleysteamer
spelling

[stanleysteamer]

Hi all, here is the conclusion.  I took the offending stud out and decided to just go further into the existing hole with a 8mm tap. Whic is what I did.  I then had to very carefully pick a bolt of the right length, basically by packing it out with washers, so that it was far enough in to do the job but not so far in that it bottomed out. 

That done I replaced the rest of the stuff I had had to remove to get at the job.  By far the biggest problem was replacing the Air Con pump.  For some reason, the bolts in two of the holes did not really seem to want to go in. I lost one somewhere down inside the engine bay, or possibly in the gravel beneath.  (I know, should have spread something under the vehicle) So I dug out my trusty medical long clamping pliers and used them to position the rest, (bolt in other hole).  But two of them once tightened ending up feeling like I did not dare tighten them further for fear of stripping the threads yet again.  And my golden rule is to always use Copperslip. But that still does not help! And no, I did not overtighten anything.  I am coming to the conclusion that many thing screwed into aluminum are "use once only".

However, it is together and running and I drove 120 plus miles in it yesterday and all seems fine.  Except there is a slight smell of coolant in the cab now, but only sometimes, and I did not disturb the cooling system at all, which is a bit weird really, but I just could not face draining and refilling the system, so I worked around the top hose and still managed to do the job.  So that is the one final thing I will have to investigate.

My driving around was due to my going to inspect and then buying a Disco one V8, manual fully fitted with 4 lpg tanks.  Something I have wanted for a long time.  Once it is all OK I think the TD5 is for the market place.  Why did I bother to buy and fit the De-EGR kit, I wonder?  Still the next owner will benefit from it.

Cheers