Hi,

a lot of exhaust gas is blowing from the gasket as seen in the images. If I hold my hand to it, it feels like blowing from a 2-3 cm wide gap. Motor is only a slightly louder, but tends to kill itself sometimes when idling and very rarely studders a bit when accelerating.

How to get it tight again? Is there some special tightening substance, or will it be sufficient to order the original seal from Fiat?

I read about brushing the parts with a steel brush, then fitting the new gasket. The car was already 2 years ago at the mechanics and was tight for about a year and half, now the last months it started to smell of exhaust gases...

However, I've never done it, and the manual does not tell much.

What do I need to do the job? Temperature-resistant cooper paste? New bolts?

I'm thinking of taking only the exhaust manifold of, clean it and the other end of the exhaust pipe to which it connets - is it possible to remove the manifold without getting under the car and without help from a second person (and without the exhaust pipe falling of)? How to fit the new gasket, does one have to glue it?

Thanks,
Zardo

should I use exhaust assembly paste? (found out about it after a one-hour internet search)

and if yes, which one?

Holts Firegum?
Hermetite?
STP Bloseal?

something else?

thanks
Z.

It looks to me as if your manifold has corroded or erroded quite a lot. If the mating faces are not flat you will struggle to get a seal as there is a lot of pressure in that area and the extremes of temperature will work against you.
The joint should seal with just the correct gasket, you should not need exhaust paste.
Judging from the photos a replacement manifold may be the only permanent answer. Good luck.

Ok I did it today. I bought a new gasket (a metal plate) and a set of new nuts from fiat first. The nuts were quite expensive, but I just had no time to look for them at a discounter.

I dismounted the manifold using quite a lot of a rust-removing agent, removed the oil with ethanol and then cleaned the all connecting faces with sandpaper, which took quite some time (80 and 120 paper). Doing this, I discovered that one of the 4 nuts fixing the manifold to the exhaust pipe was missing: it was just the one were the gasket was blowing. By the way, the car was serviced for a blowing gasket already 2 and 6 years ago by an official fiat garage. They told me, the manifold was warped...

Mounted ithe manifold with the new seal and new screws, and it was tight. The remaining rust solving agent caused a lot of smoke, which went to the sky undisturbed, which means there was no leak. Checked the gasket with the hand, too: no blow and no noise.

As taking rusty nuts off was a quite pain, the whole job took me 4 hours.

cu
Zardo