You may have come across the exhaust pipe in your day to day life, especially in automobiles. Exhaust pipes are used for guiding the smoke and reactive gases to move out of the engine or the stove. Depending on the type of material, a product can have one or more than one exhaust pipe to eject the gases.
Damaged Exhaust Pipe Is Safe or Not?
It is obvious that even a crack in the exhaust pipe is not safe at all, and if you are driving with a damaged exhaust pipe, it poses a severe risk, and in some countries, it is illegal. So why put your life at risk when you can simply solve this issue and can fix your exhaust pipe with just a few simple steps.
If you own a vehicle and travel frequently, you must read this article to keep yourself and other people safe from being affected by the damaged exhaust pipe.
Vehicles are not the only thing where you see the exhaust pipe; take a round around yourself, check where you are using these pipes, and make sure that they are not cracked or damaged.
Method to Fix the Damaged Exhaust Pipe
There are many ways to fix it, but we will go with the easiest way to repair it. Most of the people try to fix it with the welding process, although it is a long-lasting method, but not everyone is an expert in welding, and it involves high health risk, so it is not a preferred choice.
Even if you are aware of the welding techniques, the welding is an expensive method and holds high health risks as compared to other non-welding techniques, and there is a high probability that in order to fix the pipe, you end up doing more damage and making it unusable.
Steps to Follow
- Locate the Fault
Before selecting a fixing method, the first thing is to locate the leakage or fault and then determine the extent of it. The methods you are going to use mainly depends on the leakage size. Therefore you should thoroughly inspect it from all sides.
Sometimes, leaks are not visible to the eyes; you should use the inspection mirror or the flashlight if you are not able to detect it easily.
- Determine the size
If the leak size or damaged part is small, you can simply apply the adhesive solution tape around the hole, or you can also use the repair putty. It will help only if there is a minor shaft in the exhaust pipe.
What to do if leakage is not small in size? Well, there are other solutions to it. By now, we know it that the repair tape is not enough, and we need other things too to repair the damage fully.
- Preparation For Applying the Method
At this stage, you are aware of the fault and knows the exact size of the leak. Now you should start preparing for the fix. For this, you need to separate the exhaust pipe and place it on a uniform surface.
Safety should always be your priority; before moving further, you must have a set of gloves and other necessary safety gear with you at all times during the process.
- Moving With The Appropriate Method
Directly moving to the solution, for covering the large hole or the damage, we need to have a piece of aluminum material which you can easily get from a tin pack. Cut the aluminum piece according to the size of the damage.
Before placing the aluminum piece on the damaged area, you should clean it properly, preferably with a brush or sandpaper. Cleaning is important because it helps in sticking the solution accurately and make it long-lasting.
If there is anything that is not removed by the brush or the sandpaper, you should apply dimethyl ketone or any other organic solvent to make sure it is neat and clean.
Here comes the last part of it, place the aluminum patch on the damaged area, and also apply epoxy solution for longevity and durability. Use a wooden rod for applying the epoxy, and if needed, you can wrap it around with a repair solution tape; the seal will be made stronger, effective, and resilient.
Congratulations! You have successfully fixed your exhaust pipe without the need for welding; all you need now is to wait for a few minutes as the epoxy takes time to dry. After that, test the exhaust pipe to see if it is completely repaired or not.
If you have not found any fault in the testing phase, that means that you have successfully repaired it with your own hands and save a lot of money. In addition, you get an experience and knowledge of handling such a task on your own.