After a bunch of work on this old truck, I am itching to drive it around but not with the noisy exhaust that it has. I figured it was the way the exhaust pipe mated up with the manifold which was somebodies idea of a quick fix which did last for years. I took it to shop to have the right kind connector put on but he found it was my manifold leaking at the head and suggested that the manifold was warped. So I took it off and held a straight edge to and I could see maybe .020/030" of gap at the center so I took it to another shop to have the manifold planned or milled flat and true. A quick turn around, just a few hours but I was surprised to see that it had been done on a belt grinder and not a milling machine or other machine tool. I went to bolt it on and bolts seem to be bottoming out and there is still about .060" gap between the head and manifold. Looking closer, I see that the exhaust manifold is running into some kind raised feature on the block and probably why it was noisy in the first place. When I put the head on last year, I made sure that the seal surfaces for the inspection cover lined up without any step and as far as I know the only detail that needs to be adhered to when putting a head back on. So now my options are to find a new manifold set which may reproduce the problem in any case or to make up some spacers and use a double set of gaskets which seems a bit of a kluge but I am not sure what else to do, other then welding the spacers onto the manifold and risk warping it again. Has anybody else had this problem and how did you fix it?
