Blowing manifold

[Horney]

Hi there,

I'm thinking of buying an 8v Gti off a chap who posts on here. The car in question has a blowing manifold.  How easy/expensive is this to fix? I'm talking best and worse case here. I've built a mini from scratch so tools, savvy etc are not a problem, it just all looks a bit of a nightmare behind there.

Horney

[Gambit]

a 2nd hand manifold is dirt cheap. biggest problem is rusted manifold bolts

you can drop the subframe which will allow easier access to it

also, whereabouts is it blowing? i had a crack in my old 16v manifold and a decent patch of gun-gum covered it believe it or not!!

[Horney]

Well I spoke to my local exhaust bloke who's a good mate of mine and said that even he wouldn't do it. He said they are a total nightmare and best left to specialists to sort out.

All I'm looking for is a cheap MKII that runs and that I don't need to spend the earth on/spend hours working on straight away.

[Ceptor]

Check out some of my prevoius posts. I had a blowing manifold on my 1.6 and solved it eventually 

[GTI-BOY]

I agree with Gambit but with a bit of persistance and wd40 it can be done
It's a pain in the arse though!

I removed the intake manifold (6 hex/allen key type bolts) and connections, which gave better access to the zorst manifold, then it's 6 or 8 bolts/nuts (13mm I think??) to remove from the head and 6 nuts (15mm) to disconnect from downpipe.... drown all bolts in wd40 or similiar and leave for a while...... and replace all bolts/nuts with new ones for next time! Well at least, that's how I did it

[laserblaster]

i did mine! mk 2 gti 8v!

i did it on my drive first you take the inlet manifold off you need a 6mm alen key i used the smaller socket the one below the normal size one and a little exstenion bar...... to reach the allen key bolts....

once you have the inlet off you can get at the exhaust manifold with easy!! from above the engine!

you will need to jack the car up to undo the manifold to downpipe bolts!

i used the bigger normal socket to do the manifold bolts!

[Horney]

Thanks for all your replies.

It has given me food for thought.

Horney

[VeeDubGTI16v]

i welded up the crack in my 1.6 manifold

[...joe]

Well I spoke to my local exhaust bloke who's a good mate of mine and said that even he wouldn't do it. He said they are a total nightmare and best left to specialists to sort out.

its not that hard! your mate must be a lazy f**k*r!

[audiquattro]

Have you done it mate?
I done it when i had the head off, its actually VERY tricky to get the inlet manifold off, there is very little access.
If i remember right, you can only get to  the middle allen key bolts with a 1/4 inch socket, so as you can imagine thats not very strong, and things can break....
So no its not an easy job at all.