exhaust leak affecting perfomance/ fuel economy?

[95WhiteCamry]

kind of a noobie question, but i really had to ask:

how does an exhaust leak from the front manifold affect performance/ fuel economy (if it does ) ? on my 1mz, the bit of gasket behind the middle pipe on the front manifold has a small stream of exhaust coming out of it at any given point in time. what kind of an effect would this have on the engine in general? thanks.
-alex

[kpszar]

When I had a hole in my flex pipe, I could feel that my car had less power. I've got it fixed and runs better than new.

[eurohazard]

An exhaust leak further back toward the muffler end won't likely cause much of a problem. But a leak at the head, or even where yours is WILL affect performance, but maybe no mpg. You want to get it fixed as soon as possible. It can cause the valves to burn up if gone unchecked.

[Eye8Pussies]

any leak before the o2 sensors will affect both mpg and performance, as they will then read the exhaust as leaner than it really is and add fuel that isn't really needed

[95WhiteCamry]

ok, so replacing the gasket may be my next order of things. should be pretty simple, right? remove header, remove old gasket and add new one, sounds about right?

however, if it is actually the headers that have an exhaust leak, something that will be probably around 500 dollars to replace, do you think the money spent would actually be worth it to get a few horses back and to maybe kick up the mpg by 2, 3 at most? thanks.