[DiGiam]

My KOOKs 2' headers leak at the ball flange as well. the ticking is annoying

[Nightfall SS]

My kooks always sound like there is a leak with the enhanced ticking noise but with flashlights and inspection mirrors I never see evidence of soot caking or anything so I presume its just the nature of the beast to hear these noises now. I never had codes though once I tuned for it.

[1LE Red Dragon]

Originally Posted by Nightfall SS

My kooks always sound like there is a leak with the enhanced ticking noise but with flashlights and inspection mirrors I never see evidence of soot caking or anything so I presume its just the nature of the beast to hear these noises now. I never had codes though once I tuned for it.

The sound you are talking about, I was used to. This sound that developed is a old truck sounding leak, that you can only hear mostly on the highway cruising. You give it a little gas and you hear the leak. When you go WOT or about 60% throttle (i would estimate), the exhaust gets loud enoujgh where you cant hear it. This sound is a putt putting noise. We could not feel it the first time I took it in on the lift. But we did see the black soot mark. The 2nd and 3rd time taking it in, you could feel the leak, its very small and you dont hear it under the car much at idle. But when the exhaust pressure is loud, and with the AFM valves shut the higher backpressure causes it to leak worse. My mechanic and my thoughts on it.

I am trying to get to Kooks R&D center for them to evaluate. They are only 30 minutes from me.

[marknagy13]

I have the same problem. This stuff seemed to fix it pretty well and it's easy to install.

http://amzn.to/2GHPFmQ

[1LE Red Dragon]

I will give that a shot. From Kooks R&D guy, he says they have made a pipe that will go from the outlet of the connector pipes (catted or off-road for stock exhaust) to the stock rear muffler. This pipe is smoother than the stock pipe and eliminates the crush section too. It is the primary stages of production. And he says it will make for a much more reliable connection, but at a cost.

[Spaceme1117]

I don't mean to resurrect a 4-year old thread but if the OP is still active here, I would love to hear if he was able to solve the leak?

I just got a bunch of O2 codes pop up on me on my 2017 SS. I have the Kooks headers with the catted connection pipes to the stock exhaust and everything had been running perfect since the install in the early spring. (Also had the car tuned at the same time)

Only thing I can think changed was that we went from 70+F temps to barely 32F temps in about a day and maybe this is causing a connection (or connections to leak).

I should be able to get under the car in a few days once the temps warm up.

It is definitely not the problem of the harness on the passenger side touching the header; I made sure to move that out of the way and heat insulate it at the time of the header install.

[Camarojt]

I have a Question for those that did the Kooks headers with off-road connection pipes to factory NPP exhaust. I cut my factory exhaust pipes where Kooks said, however the off-road pipes won’t fit inside the factory exhaust pipe unless the end of the factory exhaust pipe is flared some. A muffler shop can do this very quickly. My question is, for those of you that decided to take your car to a muffler shop for this reason, did you leave your exhaust attached in the rear and the hangers, and just let it rest on the tunnel brace and drive it that way slowly to the muffler shop? Or did you remove the exhaust, and truck it separately while you drive your car to them?

[Sephx1]

Wouldn’t a V-band setup take care of the leaking issues? I’m considering this so I can easily take out the cats on my ZL1 and swap them for off road pipes when I track it.