[Chuck]

Exhaust system

There were a couple of minor issues with the exhaust system. One of the bolts securing the adaptor plate to the engine interfered with a pipe on the header. Fran suggested a solution that worked very well. The offending bolt was removed, the hole reamed with a three quarter inch countersink, and a flush hex head bolt installed. This solved the problem

The Weslake Guerny valve covers are thicker than the usual “Ford” covers. One of the header pipes was in direct contact with the valve cover (not a problem with the standard covers). A bit of filing on the Weslake Gureny cover opened up a 1/16th inch gap, solving that problem.

The collectors are secured to headers with four quarter inch stainless bolts, however we did not crank them down tight. Instead a tiny bit of play was left and a second nut added to each bolt to keep them in place. This will minimize any distortion that might occur from variations in the expansion of the metal.

To assure a leak free seal between the collectors and the headers, a bead of high temp Permatex Ultra Copper was run around each collector opening before it was pushed on to the headers. This eliminated the bit daylight that was otherwise visible when looking into the tail pipes.

The muffler supplied by RCR has a single bracket on the bottom which lines up with an unused hole on the Audi transmission. A button head stainless screw was used to secure this bracket. A button head screw was used because a low profile was necessary to avoid interfering with the shifter cable bracket.

A bit of Mother’s Billet Polish really made it shine.