MAF g/s increase after exhaust leak fix. Retune required?

[TRSCobra]

I've been dealing with a pre-turbo exhaust leak since I put my Perrin ELH on the car. The shop that did my engine and tuned my car tried to fix the leak with clamps, but they ended up deforming the pipe and making the leak worse!

 

I finally decided to attempt a fix myself (before resorting to welding) by using some heavy duty T-bolt clamps that cost $2 each on ebay. The clamps just about did the trick. I get some whistling when I first start the car until the header gets warm, then it quiets down. A HUGE improvement from before.

 

Anyways, my car dynoed at 334whp and consistently hit 332-335 MAF g/s when the header was leaking. I checked yesterday and I hit 348 g/s and logged 355 g/s today! I'm assuming that my MAF is scaled correctly, so this pretty much means I just gained ~20whp?

 

My question is: If the leak was there when the car was tuned, would I be running any kind of risk with this added power?

 

Her are my logs before and after if anyone's interested:

datalog3.csv

datalog4.csv

[rao]

1. Fix the leak properly, which means weld it or thorw the headers in the garbage can where they belong.

 

2. If the tune was done with the pre-turbo exhaust leak, your boost control might not be set up properly.

[TRSCobra]

1. Fix the leak properly, which means weld it or thorw the headers in the garbage can where they belong.

 

2. If the tune was done with the pre-turbo exhaust leak, your boost control might not be set up properly.

 

I used the clamps instead of welding just to see if they'd bend the metal back enough to stop the leak. I planned on having them welded, but the local subaru performance shop recommended the t-bolt clamps over welding because of the risk of cracking that's associated with welding these headers. Also, at a total of $4 plus a few hours of my own time (they were a bit tough to get on!), I opted to try this out before spending ~$200 in gaskets and labor to have them welded.

 

That's what I'm worried about. It looked like they might have put some of that high heat copper silicone in the joints when they tuned it, but it has since blown out.