Learn More About Car Exhaust Hardware

Heard of this term, but don’t know what it means or what it does? We have put it all together to help you know all the components of brake hardware.

Exhaust hardware comprises all the supporting components of an exhaust system. Components like hangers, exhaust gaskets, pipe joints and exhaust pipe adapter play a very critical role in exhaust’s proper working and also in keeping all the components of exhaust together.

Your vehicle has many components in exhaust hardware that need regular maintenance to keep your car running. Today, here we are going to read about these exhaust hardware parts, their use and how to replace them.

Exhaust hardware comprises many types of components, ranging from bolts, gaskets, joints to the mounting pads for exhaust pipe. Each plays a unique role in the working of your vehicle’s exhaust.

A component called exhaust flange joint is the most common form of joint found in your exhaust system. It is present under your car and is used to join pipe from catalytic converter to further connecting pipes. Similarly, most of the other components are also present under your car, but few parts like Exhaust manifold bolts, header gasket and manifold clamps are present near the vehicle engine and are exposed to very high heat.

There are many parts in exhaust hardware, we will discuss all below.

1. Exhaust flange joint (Exhaust donut) - It is one of the most common form of joint present in the entire exhaust system, it is used to connect two pipes mostly of equal diameter. Exhaust band clamp can also do this Joint’, so what is so special about this joint? The exhaust band clamp can only create a solid link two between pipes but whereas exhaust donut is a movable joint that allows a slight movement between the 2 pipes, allowing both of them to move independently. 
2. Spring bolt - Spring bolts are the reason because of which flange joints are flexible joint. Spring bolts are used to join both sides of flange joint together in a spring-loaded manner. These bolts are exposed to highly corrosive environment, that's why they need to be changed regularly.
3. Exhaust gasket and exhaust manifold gasket - These both are never visible from outside but are very important parts, these prevent leakage of exhaust gases from flange joint and exhaust manifold respectively.
4. Exhaust band and saddle clamps - Exhaust band clamp is used to join two pipes of equal diameter and saddle clamp is used to join the pipes with different diameter.
5. Insulator- It is a rubber mounting pad used as a hanger for tail pipe. It is useful for vibration dampening and also prevents high exhaust heat from reaching the car's body.
6. Exhaust manifold bolts and clamp - Exhaust manifold bolts are used to join exhaust manifold to the engine, and manifold clamp is used to join exhaust manifold with the car’s body. This prevents unwanted vibrations between the manifold and the body.
7. Oxygen sensor - As its name suggests, it is present near the catalytic convertor. It senses the amount of oxygen in the exhaust gases, and the ‘Electric Control Unit (ECU) uses this data’ to regulate the amount of fuel to be burnt in the vehicle engine at each stroke.
8. Exhaust gas recirculation and turbocharger - These are a few of the advanced features in modern day cars, these technologies extract energy from the exhaust gases (that were initially going to be totally wasted) to either preheat the intake air or to increase pressure of intake air, that further helps in better combustion.

Main features to be kept in mind while buying exhaust hardware are all related to material and level of fit it provides. Most of the parts in exhaust hardware are exposed to a phenomenon known as creep, that is repeated heating and cooling or highly corrosive environments like dust and moisture. These reasons make it very important for us to keep a close eye on the material of the hardware.

If you do not understand these technicalities related to material, don’t worry at all. We at Parts avatar have all covered for you, just buy products from the top brands like Walker or Dorman and do not worry about their quality and life at all.

Exhaust hardware does not play a direct role in operation of entire exhaust system, but is highly critical to keep the entire vehicle’s exhaust system together and working properly. All the parts of the exhaust hardware prevent failures like exhaust gas leakage by providing gaskets between all joints and maintain proper fitment between all the components of an exhaust system by joints like flange or saddle joints and also highly critical bolts like spring bolts and manifold/header bolts.

A vehicle’s exhaust hardware is exposed to very harsh conditions, it is always prone to corrosive dust and moisture, and also it can break because of any impact or develop internal cracks because of repeated heating and cooling. Few of the very common problems with exhaust parts are.

• Leakage of exhaust gases
• Broken exhaust hanger
• Broken/ rusted flange joint
• Corroded springs in spring bolts
• Vibration in exhaust manifold

There are a few symptoms by which a vehicle owner can predict if there is a problem in his vehicle’s exhaust system that may be caused because of a bad part in exhaust hardware. Few of the symptoms that help to get to know if any of the above problems exist or are going to occur are.

1. Loud noise - This is the most common problem found in a vehicle, this can be because of leaking exhaust gases. This means that there is a crack or breakage in either the flange joint or there is a spoilt gasket. This is a serious problem because it can cause exhaust gases to fill in the passenger cabin and also cause lot of noise pollution.
2. Decreased mileage - There can be many reasons that might cause this, one reason can be that there is a leakage somewhere in the vehicle’s exhaust system that is allowed in more oxygen and that is being detected by oxygen sensor. Now, since oxygen sensor senses more than normal oxygen in the exhaust gases, it will signal the ECU to burn more fuel to balance it out.
3. Hanging exhaust pipe - This means that your exhaust hanger is broken or loose.

Many of the tools required to change exhaust hardware are probably already in your toolbox. If not, purchasing these tools will be an excellent investment since most of them can be used for a multitude of other tasks.

• Start with the right protection gear
• Jack and Jack stand
• Wrench set
• Allen Wrench set

One of the biggest and most well-known brands for exhaust hardware are available with us at Parts Avatar.

• Walker USA Exhaust Hardware
• Dorman/Help Exhaust Hardware

Here are the parts which are related to car exhaust hardware:

A new exhaust hardware part can cost from as low as 2 $ to around 1200 $ for some of the highly advanced exhaust brake kits.

Changing some parts like some clamps and flange joints are the work of maximum an hour but few tasks like changing exhaust manifold nuts or exhaust brake can be a task of some 3-4 hours.

As we now know that exhaust hardware comprises many various components, and it is very easy to assume that procedures to change all parts have to be different and with different complexities. Today here we will discuss how to change a flange joint, spring bolts and gasket in five easy steps.

Step 1

Lift your car from back with the help of a jack and using a ramp get under the car.

Step 2

Inspect the joint visually and check for rust on the spring bolts. If there is a lot of rust present, use some penetrating oil while unscrewing the bolts.

Step 3

Once the bolts are unscrewed, just open up the joint and if required to change the joint continue to step 4 or else just remove the old gasket from the joint, replace it with a new one and re-tighten the joint with new spring bolts.

Step 4

To change the flange joint, now remove the exhaust clamps on both sides of the joint. This will now allow you to slide remove joints from both the pipes.

Step 5

Now replace it with new joints, re-tighten the clamps, and close the joint with new spring bolts as we did in step 3.