Exhaust manifold red hot, please help!

Usual reason is severely retarded ignition timing.

Check the timing gears are still aligned right. Odds are the cranks timing marks don't line up with TDC

My brother has a photo of a Carerra engine of some sort, (5 cylinder), and its manifold is glowing red hot.

I take it that a glowing manifold is Bad News(tm).

Pete.

Depends on the vehicle, full load on quite a lot of vehicles will make the manifold glow red, I've seen them bright yellow on the test bed.

An engine running at high power without airflow - like on a test bed - will easily produce a red hot manifold. It's when it happens at low power there's something wrong.

Hello Mike.

02 Nov 03 20:32, you wrote to all:

MW> What I mean by timing range is: the whole range adjusting the MW> distributor timing is 30 degrees BTDC to TDC, none for ATDC. I's really MW> stange that I would have to move the crankshaft back two teeth to fix MW> the problem, all logic says that the crankshaft and camshaft should be MW> set to thier respective timing marks. Does anybody any any advice as I'm MW> still dealing with this problem.

If it were a Lada I'd say that the timing marks had been drilled in the wrong place on a factory. Maybe this is also the case with Korean cars.

Sorry that I couldn't help.

Sergey

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Thanks you

I guess I should have mentioned that the timing gears (crank and camshaft) only fit on one way, they cannot be put on backwards or turned.

Ya I would think it's a bad thing! This is a Hyundai Excel, no high power luxury sports car here. The engine is fairly simple, but for some reason this problem is complicated as the exhaust manifold was never like this before.

That still lets you fit the distributor 1 tooth out though?

& is the timing mark on the crank gear or the harmonic damper, sometimes they twist

Have you got a timing light? It would be interesting to check the actual timing at different engine speeds. It's fairly simple to print up a scale on your computer if the car one doesn't read high enough - or you can get a timing light that will read off the advance for you. I presume it's a distributor on a car this age, and you've checked the centrifugal advance isn't worn or sticking?

No harmonic damper on the crankshaft, just crankshaft gear (timing belt gear) and crankshaft pulley. This car (all versions if it) weren't designed with a harmonic damper. I already thought of turning the distributor back one tooth. If I move the distributor back one tooth, the car won't start, if it's moved ahead the car won't start. Asuming that the timing is set correctly, using the timing marks provided, do you think that there might be a problem with the head? It runs good, no backfiring, it's not sluggish, so it's not a problem with the valves, but what about carbon build up?

I'll bet it's timing, sticky mechanical advance or just plain wrong.

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That's one thought that I had, but if the advance didn't work, then I wouldn't be able to step on the gas and excelerate to a crusing speed down the highway. I will however take a look at the advance for the distributor in the manual. Thanks for the suggestion Mike

With severely retarded timing and hence fuel mixture still burning in the exhaust manifold, you would expect a very sluggish engine and poor mpg.

Does this car have secondary air injection into the manifold, and is it running abit rich for whatever reason?

Tim..

I keep thinking about getting a Lada and a FIAT twin cam :P.

No air injection system I must mention that the secondary throttle does work, as I can drive the car to 140Kph, when the car was sluggish I couldn't even get er up to 100Kph. So I figured out why it wasn't running properly (timing) just can't get my head around this exhaust manifold thing.

Are you sure the manifold wasn't this hot all along? I would have thought the exhaust gases would be at their hottest when the engine was running properly, so the fact that you're linking the poor running with the hot manifold is a red herring. I had a car which gave trouble opn the motorway at night and I lifted the bonnet to see what was going on and the maniford was red hot. The trouble was that the top of the piston had come away, but the manifold had got hot before this happened.

Rob Graham