Missing exhaust manifold bolt!

[Rich24km]

Suspicious with the cars performance lately. I decided to take off the heat shield to find that the lower left exhaust mani. bolt was completely missing. What damage could have been done from this being missing? Should I be worried. I will get a compression check after it is put back in with a new gasket.

 

[boomergt]

I took my exhaust heat shield off to polish it, and I had 2 bolts completely out. I went to the dealer and ordered some up.
This should cause any problems to you engine.

 

[BOOSTR]

It sounds like its a good idea to add retorquing the bolts to our normal maintenace routine. 1 missing bolt shouldn't impact performance, but not having the manifold seated properly will contribute to gasket deterioration.

 

[Rich24km]

yeah i thought maybe the valves would be ****** up, but it hasn't been torqueing really hard at any point while i've been driving. So I know they're not. Once I found it I stayed out of boost. Mazda wanted to charge 500 bucks to put a new gasket on, i laughed at the guy because i could do it in about 1 hr without a lift. So I have the parts on order and then i'll be putting in the new bolt and gasket. It was funny when the guy told me it would take 5 hours, I could definately tell he was lying. I was like dude I work on helicopters and I can do jobs 10X harder than this in less time than 5 hours. I could change an engine in an osprey faster than that. It requires way more.

 

[BoOsTiN]

Just had my missing bolt replaced under warranty! Its funny, I think I was missing the same one as you.