Exhaust Leak And Engine Codes?

[aiyoung97]

Hello everyone! Just purchased my first Mustang, and also my first Ford made vehicle. Have a 1996 Ford Mustang GT, 4.6 5 speed. It has had a PI head and intake swap, CAI, BBK headers, cat delete, and flowmaster 40's. Besides that I believe everything is stock. The car shows 57k miles on the odo.

The car runs very good, besides what I believe to be a bad exhaust leak. Under acceleration I can hear a pretty loud tick coming from the passenger side. The harder you press on the gas pedal the louder it gets. At an idle the engine is super quiet which makes me think its an exhaust leak and not a tappet or something. I did a KOER test today and pulled engine codes P1158 and P1138. Are these codes relevant to this ticking/exhaust leak? What could be the problem here? is it exhaust manifold gaskets or something completely different?

Thanks guys/gals! - Alex

 

[imp]

Hello everyone! Just purchased my first Mustang, and also my first Ford made vehicle. Have a 1996 Ford Mustang GT, 4.6 5 speed. It has had a PI head and intake swap, CAI, BBK headers, cat delete, and flowmaster 40's. Besides that I believe everything is stock. The car shows 57k miles on the odo.

The car runs very good, besides what I believe to be a bad exhaust leak. Under acceleration I can hear a pretty loud tick coming from the passenger side. The harder you press on the gas pedal the louder it gets. At an idle the engine is super quiet which makes me think its an exhaust leak and not a tappet or something. I did a KOER test today and pulled engine codes P1158 and P1138. Are these codes relevant to this ticking/exhaust leak? What could be the problem here? is it exhaust manifold gaskets or something completely different?

Thanks guys/gals! - Alex

Those codes relate to Oxygen Sensor problems. One on each bank, or side. Only way an O2 could make an exhaust leak would be it loosened up, or blew out it's guts. Very unlikely. More than likely it IS an exhaust leak, from your description of more load, more noise, maybe a manifold to head leak (try checking bolts for looseness, those are noted for it), or manifold to exhaust pipe gasket leak. imp

 

[aiyoung97]

Those codes relate to Oxygen Sensor problems. One on each bank, or side. Only way an O2 could make an exhaust leak would be it loosened up, or blew out it's guts. Very unlikely. More than likely it IS an exhaust leak, from your description of more load, more noise, maybe a manifold to head leak (try checking bolts for looseness, those are noted for it), or manifold to exhaust pipe gasket leak. imp

What exactly is the problem with the o2 sensors? do they need replaced? I had a shop look at my exhaust today, he said that there were no leaks on the pipes and the noise was coming from the headers so i'm assuming this noise is definitely an exhaust manifold to head leak... How hard of a job is this to replace?

 

[wmburns]

Under acceleration I can hear a pretty loud tick coming from the passenger side.

IF the spark plugs are backing out they can make a "tick" sound. Recommend re-torquing the spark plugs to factory specs just to be sure. It's much cheaper to re-torque rather than thread repair after a blow out.