I have the 'ticking' sound coming from the drivers-side exhaust manifold area that others have reported here. Noted an exhaust manifold heat shield stud busted off, so I removed that but confirmed that I can feel little puff's of exhaust coming from the area.

My question is, is it OK to drive the thing? I have to go the airport tomorrow for a business trip (65 miles to airport) but I don't want to screw up the truck on the way to the airport.

Other than the LOUD, annoying ticking sound the engine seems to be running just fine. No check engine light or anything at this point.

 

probably shouldnt....
but then i've had a little leak the whole 5 years i've had the truck so what do i know?...


lol

 

it all depends on how bad is the leak, is there anything in the area that too much heat is bad for like wires and such. with the leak the truck is not going to run its best but it should be OK if its a small leak.

 

Im not a hugh fan of driving a vehicle thats not at 100%. But Im in batmans boat on this. I have had an exhaust leak for years now but mine seals itself when it heats up. Yours sound a bit worse.

If your just going to the airport, and back, and there is nothing that the hot exhaust is going to destroy I dont see a problem.

 

I should have mentioned that it does seal itself up when driving, but I will err on the side of caution tomorrow... let the engine heat itself up before heading out. Supposed to snow here in Denver tonight anyway, so a good warm up will hopefully get me where I need to go. The heat shield is still in place... just rattles even more now. Will chat with the dealer this week and find out how many limbs I'll need to give to have it repaired. Looks like it could be an easy job though, if I'm willing to take the time. Tight fit in there with tools and such and with the need to extract a bolt stud, it might be worth letting the boys at the shop do the job just in case some of the other studs decide to break off when taking off the exhaust manifold.

Any thoughts on doing the repair myself? Anyone done the job?

There's no way I'm gonna drive around for even one day without my baby making hideous noises. It's either the repair shop when I get back or half a day in the garage.

 

i just started a thread about this type of sound and cannot figure it out after testing back pressure and a few other tests that i performed and nothing was out of the normal.

 

The bolts commonly break where the Y pipe meets the headers. Pretty easy to throw another bolt in there. You can probably drive it with no problem but dont let it go too long. Your engine/firewall area will turn black lol