Buying 2007 Denali with broke exhaust bolts???

[nadthomas]

I'm looking at buying my boss's 2007 Yukon Denali with 192k miles on it. It has a handful of minor-ish issues that are all fixable(but what's not with enough money and work). Generally in pretty good shape for the mileage and year, and I know a lot of the miles were highway miles. For at least the past year (maybe 2) I have heard an exhaust leak when he starts it up, and after getting a chance to take it home and look at it last night I found the leak. The back two driver side exhaust manifold bolt heads have snapped off. If I buy it, I might get the Karl or Doorman clamp to band aid it temporarily, but I also have a small welder that I can use to weld on a nut to do it properly later.

My bigger concern is the potential for damage to the engine since its been like this for a while. It still appears to be running great, from what I can tell. Idles, and drives fine around town, and it certainly pulls strong when you get on it. Gas mileage according to the computer it about 14.5mpg. I'm going to have the vehicle over the weekend. Should I buy a set of gauges and do a leak down test, or is that overkill?

The Denali will just be a 3rd vehicle for my wife and I, and probably mostly will be used in bad weather and road trips.

I'm a big automotive enthusiast, and pretty handy, but besides the research I've done over the past couple of days, I'm not really familiar with this platform. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

THANKS!

 

[kwOH]

How much are you going to pay for it?

 

[nadthomas]

Probably about $6k-7k, we still need to finalize price.

 

[kwOH]

Probably about $6k-7k, we still need to finalize price.

Id say for $6k, it might be worth it

 

[nadthomas]

Yeah, after looking it over I think its probably worth closer to $6k given the things that I would want/need to fix. Does anyone know if these trucks have a history of burn valves if the exhaust manifold leak is neglected for a while. Just trying to determine if I should spend the time/money doing a leak down test while I have it this weekend.

 

[nadthomas]

I performed a leak down test on bank 1 over the weekend, and everything checked out great. Each cylinder was within 2-3% of each other, and overall compression was very good. Good to know that an engine with 192k is showing minimal signs of wear.