Greetings and Happy New Year. Thanks in advance for your comments/hints...

My wife's 1980 244 is idling pretty fast. She also claims that it is loosing power, making sounds in the exhaust, and she maybe is smelling more exhaust.

A brief look under the hood shows that the entire exhaust manifold is being held to the head with only 3 bolts on the forward-most flanges. None of the rest have nuts on them at all. One mid-way back has a stud showing but it does not extend far enough to put a nut on it. So I am suspicious.

I know that this car has never had the full compliment of fasteners here since we got it. But I guess that over time they have disappeared (broken off it would seem) one by one. My 1983 242 still has all of its original fasteners.

So:

(a) Would the symptoms my wife describes fit with an exhaust manifold having a less than perfect seal?

(b) What is the best way to approach this? Does the head have to come off entirely? Or can the manifold be removed and what remains of the bolts be extracted?

Cheers!