I'm replacing my cracked exhaust manifold with headers and they go all the way back to the square flange. Well I can't get it off and it looks melted. Am I boned here?

 

Melted? lol. You'd have a severe case of overheating if your engine could get hot enough to melt metal. It looks like someone welded the flanges together however.

 

That's just great. And before I did have it over heat but that's been fixed. And the guys I got to weld my cat did a crap job. So my solution here is just cut that sucker off right?

 

Maybe I'm not seeing it right, but I don't see where the flanges are welded together. There's clearly some backyard welding BEHIND the flange (is that the butcher job on the cat?), but I don't see where the flanges are welded. There's a lot of metal gone from rusting over the years, but that's not welding.

Since cutting is forever (pretty much), before you do that, try some heat (massive heat) on those bolts, after soaking them overnight with PB Blaster.



If that doesn't work, might be time to bite the bullet and just do the exhaust from header to tailpipe.

 

I don't think it's worth the effort to save, this will fix it.

 

Cutting is the only way that you are going to get that mess off. Someone really did a real bad job on a repair.

 

I managed to cut the bolts with my dremel but now I can't get the flange away from the square piece it attaches to that holds it to the jeep. Someone welded studs into it and it really sucks. That's the only thing stopping me from completing this project.

 

"NOT" you need more than that, like a trip to the muffler shop for exhaust work (Major)!

 

There pressed in beat them out....