I have heard that stainless bolts should not be used on exhaust headers or manifolds . Any one else ?

 

IIRC, there was a TSB from Ford about replacing the mild steel exhaust bolts on the Triton V10 with stainless steel, so I'm going to guess that, yes, you can use SS on exhaust manifolds.

I wouldn't do it without a good copper or nickel anti-seize, though.

 

On all the Ford modular engine they were having the mild steel exhaust bolts snapping off inside the head. They went to an alloy steel but a good high quality/strength stainless would be good too.

 

Alloy allen head screws are strong but hard to keep from rusting. It took a couple of modified allen wrenches to get the ss allen head screws tightened but between that and the thicker gasket there's no more leak. Thanks for the great comments.

 

Now I see the problem, your running a SBC. Glad you got it fixed.

 

lol, I half expected this to be the first reply to this thread.

the one thing I don't like about the SBC is the siamese exhaust on the center cylinders. If I started it today I might go with a LS dropout motor but it's still hard to beat the cost per horsepower for the classic SBC.

 

Yea, but some things are worth more than money. I personally take it as a challenge to build a better "mouse trap", pun intended.