so my car now sounds like a old farm truck almost out of nowhere. opened the hood and reved the motor with the throttle to pin point the noise. it is coming from my drivers side exhaust manifold. did some searching and it could either be a broken bolt/stud or the gasket. and it seems i can't know if its a broken bolt/stud unless i go to remove the exhaust manifold altogether? luckily its not THAT bad cause my cutout covers over half of this new sound, but i imagine that this will only get worse?....any input would be appreciated. thanks in advance

 

update: noticed the bolt is missing on that same drivers side exhaust manifold at the very back closest to firewall. checked the passenger side and it does have one so this one is missing. stuck pinky inside the hole and thought i could feel threads in it? if so i suppose its a narrow threaded setup cause it felt like a narrow threaded part the bolt would go into. i could be wrong i suppose and it could be the broken off bolt? idk. i never took the bolts off, let alone havent touched them in god knows how long. what is the next step i should take? i cant get down there to see inside of it even with a flashlight

 

Use an inspection mirror. If the bolt is broken off, you'll likely need to pull the head. If the bolt just backed out and is missing, you can replace it with a 3/8"x16 bolt.

 

When I removed my engine, three of the six bolts on the drivers side manifold were broken off. Two came out ok after I got the manifold off, the other had to be extracted. If you are taking off the manifolds, i'd say it's time for some long tubes :-)

 

another update, ends up that the bolt is indeed broken off, but not causing a leak from it. the head is still sealed from whats still remaining in there. the leak is between that manifold and that cat directly below it. the guy said he will have to use pb blaster method to get the old ones out. another option he said would be to drill new holes in it. either way its just some labor charges im going to have to pay. thank god its not that dreaded problem where i have to take the manifold, head, etc off. although i will at some point if i need new manifolds/get headers, but not for a bit.

 

update: it was indeed the connection between the left side cat and bottom of exhaust manifold. few hours including some PB Blaster and new bolts and gasket took care of it. now on to the EGR then she's happy again