Well, time for another update. I hit the exhaust shop bright and early at 8AM and it's one of those "good news, bad news" scenarios. May as well start with the bad news (which isn't so bad).
As soon as he had a close-up look at my setup, he started covering his butt a bit. He pointed out that he might not be able to get me my truck back for a few days with New Years coming and all. He started to get me ready for a massive bill, saying that although he'd worked on a lot of vehicles through the years, done a lot of headers etc, that he'd never done any work on a 5.0 Explorer and that due to the learning curve etc, it could get expensive especially since it`s so tight in there. I like this guy and I know he doesn't want to steer me wrong so we sort of debated back and forth how much work needed to be done.
I showed him some of the snippets I took from this thread and while he appreciated the information, at stressed at the end of the day, he had to do the actual work and he couldn't provide me with an accurate estimate of time needed to swap out all the gaskets. His view was that the main headers gaskets looked fine and didn't show any obvious signs of leaks. He still saw the small driver's side gasket as being the culprit. He pulled out his stethoscope and this time I heard with my own ears what he was getting at. The "tick tick tick" at the junction sounded almost like "knock knock knock" with the scope.
So we agreed to do just the small gasket. I was also getting a resonator welded back in as I had it cut out in Wisconsin soon after the headers were done and wasn't real happy with the cabin drone.
I left the shop with the POS Neon they lent me and was feeling pretty nervous about all this. Gary is a good guy, but I started thinking he was going to gouge me just to do the small gasket and what if the new gasket didn't solve anything?
He called me a few hours later and said the truck was done. I popped by just before lunch and he said the junction was now super quiet. New gasket solved the problem. Good news is he charged me for about 1.25 hours to do both the gasket and the resonator so my fears of getting gouged were unfounded. I like this shop and they'd never given me reason to worry about getting gouged. My faith is restored. His lack of confidence about doing the main gaskets may force me to try another shop I`ve used in the past that also seems pretty good.
The moment of truth came when I fired it up. The first thing I noticed was how much quieter the truck was again. Obviously I chalked that up to the resonator. I drove it back to work and the chugging that had been giving me so much grief was not prevalent at all. I still noticed a bit of a pingy feeling, but I also had that before the headers so that was nothing new. This is a 5.0 after all and it's pretty common from what I've seen through the years. Jon and I determined that I did have a gasket leak with the stock manifolds so maybe I`m feeling something similar to what I had before.
I went home for lunch and disconnected the negative on the battery while I ate. I then reloaded one of my Henson tunes (because I couldn't remember which one I had in there) and drove back to work.
There seems to be the slightest hint of chugging, but part of it may be psychological. I would still like to get the Percy's gaskets done at some future date for sure. There might be a slight leak still as I think I hear some much quieter ticking. From what I've learned from you guys, that's not uncommon! Maybe I will tackle the gasket job myself, ideally with the help of another EF guy here in Calgary who also has a 5.0 (and with the name Brad, so he`s got to be cool!).
So it appears I`ve solved some of my problem but the Percy`s gaskets will probably make the truck run even better. Only time will tell.
To be continued......
