Exhaust ticking could be something completely different. Read this: https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/8...eak-fixed.html

 

I went with the Felpro gaskets, my truck had about 100K miles on it when I replaced them and they were leaking when I bought it at 89K miles but I didnt know what I was looking at because it was my first diesel. Money wasnt there for the bellowed pipes and I was in no hurry to do the job. A friend of mine sent me a link to CL about a van turbo for $200 I bought it and it sat on my kitchen floor for about 9 months, I couldnt come up with all the funds for the bellowed pipes. I now have 113K miles on the truck and its been about a year and the gaskets are holding up great still, I wish I could have gotten the bellowed though but asking myself if I regret it.... I dont. If they start leaking again Ill save for awhile get a better turbo and the bellowed.
It is an invasive job no doubt about that but if your like me and dont like to give your money to other people when its something you can do or figure out by all means dont take it to a shop. Get a mirror and make sure that pipes are not rotting apart before you tear into it. If you have patients the job should take you a whole day to do by yourself, and if your any where near me Ill even give you a hand if youd like im in SE Michigan.
If you only want to do it once go with the bellowed pipes. If you dont have the funds now and want to do a turbo upgrade in the future get the gaskets replace them for now but plan on doing them again later down the road.
NOW.... against all odds and throwing a lot of what I and others have said out the window..... A friend of mine has a 2001 F350 with NO leaks at 289K miles!!! That ticks me off.... lol

 

I would have to disagree with you cause your assuming the guys that had these trucks before had no knowledge of their truck.I do believe that alot of things are replaced well before they need to be especially on forums,where parts are replaced just because it MAY need replacing in the future which imo is throwing money out the window?I am guilty of it myself and wish I didnt spend some of the money on mods that were completely unneccesary.Alot of these trucks are still pretty much stock out there with 300,000 miles on them.
All I can say is im at 98,000 and DO know what im looking for and have no soot what so ever , pipes are solid as well.If I do in the future need to replace I would consider the bellowed uppipes but if they last another 100,000 I probably wont. Truck will probably be a pile of rust by then since its an 02 and prolly wont hit 200 for 10 more yrs..

 

I can't disagree with that. There are a lot of suggestions floating around here and I have to continually remind myself what my goal is with my truck: Keep it going. If there's a whiz bang out there that just gives more horses, I refrain from that. If I blew something up and modern replacements exceed the reliability and durability of the stock item, I'll weigh the cost vs. return on "investment".

I put the word investment in quotes because it's only worth what you personally get out of the truck - there is no monetary return on anything with these unless you earn a living with them.

I have a few mods, but they were all upgrades on something that failed, where the tuner is a "tweener". It wasn't necessary because the stock tune works - but it does give more torque, lower the transmission and exhaust temperatures, give me just a little more MPG, and it saves some brake wear while towing downhill in the decel tune. The only mod I regret was the muffler delete, but the tax return was put to use by replacing the whole mess with a 4" and I really like it so far. I still need to prove if the 4" does anything for the engine - I'll be getting AE data for a while.

 

Call it what you wish. I was simply referring to the fact that no gasket is present at the lower end of the uppipes and the mating angles do the sealing.

 

Thanks Peter. Great write up. I have dismissed this for a while because there isn't any obvious signs, soot, etc. But I might not have really looked that close. Also some fear of rusted bolts and all that goes with that!
But noise has bugged me enough so might be time to dig in. Maybe get lucky.

 

Well I too am at the point I have to deal with my up pipes but my biggest problem is I have a E99 and the bellows kit is 2x's as much as a late99-03 bellows kit. And as it has been said if you have the money do it once and be done. Well I have a serious issue with having little to no money to work with. And I just can't bring myself to just putting them back stock. Now I do have one thing working in my favor and that is that I have the trans out which will make it alot easier to mock up. I am going to add bellows to my stock up pipes and use the fel pro gaskets. And see how that works for me. BigAl has done his this way and he said he has 60k on this set up with no problems.
And by adding the bellows I have now given the pipe somewhere other than the donut gasket end of pipe to expand and contract. Which is one of the main reason the pipe gets chewed up/ pipe moved up and down with heat cycles but the donut does NOT move. Now the donut gasket is still the weak link but I am also sand blasting the pipe instead of a smooth pipe under the donut gasket and have the pipe end expanded (by muffler shop) just enough that the donut gasket is very tight almost like a press on. This all can be done for under $100 I hope and pray it works.
So I just thought I would throw that out there but I would not suggest anyone do it unless you don't have the money for IH bellow up pipes.

 

Sorry if I am being a bozo here but I am getting terrible mileage, my truck idles at various rpm +-50rpm at idle and the thing is pretty gutless...I just put new IC boots on and have a brand new 6637 set up I got from clay while I ordered the new boots...the boots are on tight because I had a couple blow off while under heavy acceleration on race tune...not sure if I have an up-pipe issue or not and was reading through and didn't see how to tell if they are leaking, also I am positive the pipes are stock...truck has 165,000 on it BTW. Thanks ahead for any help guys!

 

Just want to add to a cost vs reliability. We rebuilt a buds engine about 10,000 miles ago, instead of going with the bellows we did the felpro bit. Well 10,000 miles later they are leaking. Why, cause of the groves and ridges deeply worn in the pipes. Oh yea and hope you don't break any bolts in the baby's butt! So since I was working on changing out a flex plate and belhousing adapter on another friends 02' with 240,000 miles I decided I would try again and fix his up pipe leaks. But this time I cut the old pipes back 3" and flipped them around so the new gaskets would have a fresh new seat to seal on. We will see how it goes. I did not come up with this idea, just happened to catch in on the OBS site and gave it a shot. Now I will say that even having the tranny out it was still a rough job. Heck when I put my bellows on my truck with the tranny still in it was a breeze. Bellowed up pipes are the easiest and quickest fix. There are no variables or maybes, it comes with everything you need to make it happen!

 

Mine are leaking, that first drivers side connection just after the BB. I plan on keeping my truck for the long haul so bellows its going to be, eventually.

 

Hey big poppa. How do I know if my pipes are leaking? Haha, (sounds funny to me)... bellowed from clay it is, but don't want to drop coin on something that is working properly...

 

My personal experience with this: Loud front end, exhaust smell everywhere, but I didn't know my MPG was low until after the fix. I went on a soot safari around the engine with a light, mirror, and an inspection camera. Everything was leaking exhaust. They didn't all go at once, so some of those leaks had to be there a while (I bought it at 220K miles). I started the engine after parking overnight and I put my hand near any exhaust component I could reach to feel the hot leaks. "Stinky" was gassy.

New exhaust manifolds, bellowed ups, and collector gave every part a clean surface to seal with. It cost some, but everything was shot - and I doubt clean-on-clean will fail prematurely. Boost and MPGs came up, Noise level in the front and EGTs came down.

 

Just ordered me a ceramic covered set last night to throw in with the other mods that are planned. Did not really “need” them right now but I “wanted” them so I bought some.

 

I want some to. Hint hint