I Fixed the Exhaust... Sorta..

On Friday night I re tightened all of the bolts on the exhaust and could no longer feel any leaks with my hand but the engine sounded like crap. I decided to go for a test drive anyway and by the time I got back it sounded even worse. I noticed that there was a hole suitable for a O2 sensor on the new catalytic converter that I could have sworn had a bolt in it when I drove off. That explained at least part of the horrible sounds I was hearing. Without that bolt, most of my exhaust was just shooting out of that hole bypassing the muffler entirely. Luckily I still haven't thrown out my old exhaust and I noticed that it had the exact same bolt in it. Sadly it looked completely fused to the rest of the cat thanks to 24 years of rust and decay. It took me a full day of periodic PB Blaster applications but eventually I was able to work that bolt free and plug my exhaust.

On to the next issue. With my exhaust now completely I was greeted by a very loud knocking sound whenever the engine was running idle. This completely stumped me so I turned to the www.thesamba.com for help. I read about some problem with lifters being misaligned often causing a similar noise and fortunately the first step fix was to just change my oil to a high mileage 20W-50 oil. I was due for a change anyway so I went ahead and changed my oil. Afterwards I took another test drive and after a few miles the sound went away.

Next issue, my engine just doesn't sound as steady as it used to. I was thinking this must be because of the O2 sensor because I was also dripping what looked like fuel out of my exhaust pipe. I think I'm running rich and everything just doesn't sound as rhythmic as it should. I disconnected the O2 sensor completely to see if anything changed and nothing did. My hunch is that I don't have a good connection on my O2 sensor. I didn't have a proper crimping tool when I did the wiring so I'm thinking I might just not be getting a good enough signal to the computer and it is screwing up my fuel injection or something... TBC

I also tried to tackle fixing my leak by replacing the seal on the luggage rack since the old one broke and I finally replaced my antennae as well. I'm hoping one of the two was the problem but I'm going to have to wait until the next storm to get the answer.