Exhaust leak, or some other problem?

When I accelerate (just to get around, as well as harder acceleration) my car is making this ticking/slapping sound on the right side. I can't tell if it's the Magnaflow catted X not sealed properly to the manifold, or if it is some other issue.

The car feels like it has a loss in power (I'm hoping it's just all in my head) and the last tank of gas I got 220 miles, and I have never gotten below 260 on a tank before.

The ticking noise is louder the more gas I give it. I don't really hear it much when the car is in nutral and I rev it. Actually I don't know if I hear it at all when doing that....

Any ideas on what it could be? I'm going to go throw it up on a lift with a buddy in a couple hours and I wanted to see if you guys had any ideas. If I find out what it is, I'll let you know.

Would an exhaust leak make the car feel and act less powerful, plus kill the gas mileage like that? My Diablo Predator pulled NO error codes when I checked yesterday. The car's been doing this for about 2 weeks.

Thanks.

Went to the shop and didn't quite figure out what was wrong.

mity2 said:

check where X pipe meets Manihold on Driver side. You might need NAPA studs mod. i had to do that in mine

Click to expand...

NAPA Studs mod. OK, I'll look that up.

The sound seems to definitely be coming from the right side of the car. It only happens when I'm moving forward. After putting it on a lift tonight, we could not hear the sound at all with the car in park and revving in neutral, or while holding the car at certain RPMs for a short time.

I still think the car may have a little power loss, but it's hard to tell. It almost sound like one of the cylinders is missing, but I doubt it, since I figured that would throw a code, plus make the car lose power without a doubt. This is more or less an uncertainty about the power loss. I did however definitely get much less gas mileage on the last tank for some reason, and that was very uncommon.

My friend and I put on my MAC catback, and I still hear the ticking over the MAC. And dang, that MAC is pretty loud with a magnaflow catted X.

I played around a little, and the car seems pretty close to normal power if not normal. I don't know if it's just the heat lately or what. I doubt it's the heat, because I didn't notice this decrease until my exhaust was last changed.

Tell me about it. It's driving me nuts. That's one reason I put the louder MAC on. That, plus the killer rolled tips.

Was a leak, and it's now fixed.

Well, it was an exhaust leak. The bolts had come untightened a little. Tightened them up on both sides (mostly the right, where the noise was coming from) and now no ticking noise.