I have just helped my friend re-install his gaskets with Permatex Copper gasket sealant (up-pipe, downpipe, exhaust and header gaskets). He said he read on here that applying a copper gasket sealant to his gaskets would rid him of his exhaust leaks. Guess what? It made the leaks worse, and now he has more leakage than before :lol: :lol:

I am not sure what he read on here, but whatever it was, he must not have read it thoroughly enough :confused:

Was he supposed to use new gaskets when doing this? Was he supposed to apply gasket sealant at all? Does anyone know what he might have been trying to do?

I like Leak soup!

New gaskets - No sealant!

Sealant will help from say blowing out a gasket but if it's leaking with a normal gasket you have other issues that need to be resolved. Ther eis other exhaust gasket material you can use that may seal a larger leak, but Permatex copper isn't it.

gasket sealant is usually not high-temp enough for pre-turbo exhaust stuff on WRXs. I gave it a shot when I was having issues with the 3 bolt uppipe flange on a GT Spec uppipe, and it just blew out immediately.

You shouldn't need any sealant. Just loosen everything, put a new (or at least decent used) gasket in, and torque the bolts to the right spec, which is surprisingly (to me) light. Around 26 ft pounds for most of the bolts in the exhaust - 34 for the headers to heads if I remember right.

I think the key is to do them in the right order. Put the headers on the heads first, then the uppipe to the headers, then the turbo to uppipe, then the downpipe to turbo, then the downpipe to the rest of the catback. Otherwise you may have enough tension on the uppipe for example, to prevent it from tightening well against the header flange.

I've almost gotten rid of all my leaks. There's a little one left at the uppipe flange where they just aren't meeting quite right. But I haven't had time lately to let the car sit for 4 hours and still have enough daylight left to loosen the joint and re-align them.

I will suggest this to him. With both of us working on the car, it took us about an 1.5 hours to get everything off and back on the car. Would you all recommend the CU copper gaskets from Crucial? Or just New OEM stuff?

thought someone was raggin on me at first then i read the thread :)

^^ lol, thats what i thought...

That is too funny........I did not even know there was a member with that name!

I will suggest that he purchase new gaskets.

Rule #1

DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ ON NASIOC

~v6

I dont believe you.

~v6

Personally I would use new OEM gaskets. The OEM gaskets are very very nice. They're like 8 or so layer MLS and should be good for a very very long time.

UPDATE - So, I see my friend after work and he tells me the car is running like CRAP! We take the car over to his garage and put the car on stands, open the hood, and we see that two of the lower Downpipe bolts have worked themselves completely off and are GONE! :) The other nuts on the downpipe are loose, the uppipe bolts are loose, the exhaust manifold is missing a nut and the other is loose. We stopped there because he was getting pissed and just wanted to get about a dozen or so more bolts and nuts to replace the missing and possibly future missing ones. I guess the copper gasket sealant maker thing did not work, and could have caused him to be dragging his exhaust on the freeway. I would NOT suggest that anyone put this type of sealant on their gaskets. He wants to do a test and see if they just need to be retorqued down, since the sealant probably needed to seat itself.

I am just helping the guy with the labor part, not with the what you should do next part. This way I not what NOT to do, If I decide to start swapping parts on mine.

Mechanic error, nothing to do with the gasket sealant.

Maybe give him a torque wrench for his birthday?

So, by not torquing the part down properly might have caused this? I was reading on some other posts,that copper gaskets and oem gaskets could have the same effect.

Does anyone know what the torque rating for these parts should be?

Just retorqued all the bolts - He had to go to 4 different stores (Osh,Napa,Kragen and a local auto parts store) to find the replacement nuts and bolts.

His car runs pretty good now, all except one leak somewhere, that is present when he is at about 5500 rpms. You can tell it is blowing through a gasket by the way the sound is occuring. I told him to just get new oem gaskets.

Stick a towel or bunched up rags in the tailpipe while the car is idling and hold them there. Then have your friend crawl around under the car and feel all the joints to find the leak.

He probably doesn't even need new gaskets - resituating the leaking one and retorquing will probably do the trick.

Wait a minute. Permatex is good stuff. When we prototyped the first exhaust system for Crucial Racing, we used permatex on all of the joints from the turbo back because we didn't have gaskets yet - it was a prototype. Not one jont leaked. I ran it for months like that and when we took it off the car, we had a difficult time separating the pipes.

I will have him try this (bunched up rags in the tailpipe) technique, and see what is what.

Yeah, his car seems to run quite strong, it's just when he gets to the higher rpm range that this loud shrieking sound appears. Kind a weird, but the car moves quite nicely. Probably, not as nice as it would without the leak, but he will not know until the leak is fixed. Oh, yeah trust me he will be the one under the car looking for the leak. All I am going to do is stuff those rags in the exhaust.

How many times did you need to retorque with just the Permatex? If you had to retorque at all. This is good to hear from a person that had only Permatex on the exhaust with no gaskets! Maybe I will suggest this to him.

I used Permatex on my Helix downpipe<->midpipe fitting because there was a small leak there. Clue was the original gasket had uneven burning. Then I applied the permatex with a new gasket just to be on the safe side and no leaks...

Did you use an OEM gasket or aftermarket? Which is cheaper OEM or Aftermarket?

In all 4 of my rebuilds in the last year or so, I have used the spray on copper on my head gaskets and exhaust gaskets. No failures.

What kind of spray-on gasket did you use? Why did you have to do 4 rebuilds in the last year or so? Was this rebuilding the same engine or 4 engines in 4 different cars.

How many times did you need to retorque with just the Permatex? If you had to retorque at all. This is good to hear from a person that had only Permatex on the exhaust with no gaskets! Maybe I will suggest this to him.


Not at all. It's good like I said, for a number of months. I don't believe it's as good as gaskets in the long run. I agree with spraying gaskets though. I've even reused uppipe gaskets after spraying them with some succcess but don't recommend the practice.

+1 for permatex high temp after the turbo, heck it may even help pre-turbo.

Make sure there is plenty of clerance btwn up-pipe and motor mount crossmember. The motor will flop over quite a bit to the pass. side,hit, and maybe helping a pipe to open up??

very nice times...glad to see GC's out there running fast...