As mentioned the exhaust elbow was a disaster of an installation. Who ever did this install knew nothing about thread sealants or pipe dope. It took nearly four hours of heat, PB Blaster, a massive bench vise and a 3.5 foot 1 1/4" black iron pipe as added leverage to an 18" Rigid pipe wrench to break these fittings apart.


Due to the improper installation of these threaded fittings they had been leaking since early on and thus rusted together as strong as I have seen in a long time. PB Blaster is great but when you are dealing with sealing threads, such as NPT, that are meant to keep fluids out, they also tend to keep most of the PB Blaster out too.


This exhaust flange fitting is a $90.00 part from Universal so I clearly wanted to save it for the owner.