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Your right Zamani,

When we started this project way back when, we did not realize that we going to be point on this conversion in CA. We thought that others had already done this conversion but we have yet to see another 24V GTV6 conversion in CA. It was such a good concept that just jumped before looking. The headers on my Hemi duster were custom made. They never leaked but just had terrible ground clearance.

Will know how much of an issue this will be in a couple of day when Phil gets back to us.

These headers or any other custom type will not crack from high temps on the gtv in low mileage unless been hit hard from under downpipe(speed bump) or if its a turbo manifold.. if car is clean you should see from under side black carbon marks around header where leak is.. This i found when stud broke. If you can hear leak from outside car you should hear it in a second using a pipe as the started shield is not near the joint of down pipe. Check stud has not come loose.
How did you find space for starter shield ? We have never been able to fit shield in hence we have wrapped starter with heat shield fabric.
Check for possible pin hole in weld in connection of three pipes into collector.
Money is still on that joint for leak.

Spoke with Phil today and he did not get a chance to look at this yet. I will take some pictures of the heat shield and share with you. The heat shield is very professional looking and we know it saves the starter from excess heat. I am surprised the the high temp coating doesn't lower the temp more. Missed my timeline so won't have Alfa for this Sunday show so we won't be going to Alameda Show after all.

Going to fix this issue along with some other minor items, detail the Alfa, and back to storage for the the Winter. It was a fun summer and hopefully next summer we can get the rest of the break in done.

cchan wrote: I am surprised the the high temp coating doesn't lower the temp more.

Maybe it's just paint?

How does one tell the difference??

One is good at keeping the temp down in the engine bay and the other just looks reasonably good.

Simple , get a knife and scratch on it. If coating comes off its paint if not its that ceramic coating . About as simple as putting a pipe down to the joint and listening for leak .

Picked up the Alfa today and drove it from Santa Cruz to Piedmont. Alfa drives great again and I wish it would always stay like this. The sound is back and no more exhaust leak.

We were lucky and the exhaust manifold was not cracked. The problem was the lower gasket was leaking/broken. Phil had to re-modify the flange and gasket. This time he made sure that the new flange and gasket were set square for no possible movement. Then he adjusted the exhaust system to line up perfectly and then welded in place. Hopefully this ends this issue.

The headers are coated and not painted so that is good to know as well. We need to still rethink the custom exhaust system to put in some additional flanges and maybe the flex pipes in the future. Maybe this winter, I will remove them from the header back and have them painted and the additional tweaks done for next year. It really doesn't make sense to have to weld it on and off everytime we need to service the Alfa.

Anyway, its fixed and for sure it custom set up so hopefully no more bugs.

Hey cchan, how about some videos of that lovely beast? never seen her in action!

CChan,

I just don't understand why the original exhaust fabricator decided to charge quite a hefty sum for your exhaust system and "forgot" to add flanges. The place where you dynoed your car (Goodies in San Jose) TIG welded a new car converter with flanges on both ends for $300 (parts and labor). A good exhaust fabricator may not need more than 5-hours to finish the job. Which means labor alone can't be more than $500.

Hi Zamani,

I really don't know why either. Running around and trying to update my Alfa has been a fun experience. It is hard to get the best discount when everything is custom. We tell everyone that we don't have alot of $ but I guess they don't believe us. We would expect that if they do charge us alot of $ that they should do it correctly. We are being much more careful now and thinking everything through and double checking our facts so we don't make anymore errors.

Thanks for your reply and concern.