exhaust leak on my 1990 f-250 with a 351< headers or manifolds<

[yamaha4400]

I have a 1990 f-250 with a 5.8 liter 351 i live in california and exhaust setups are hard to make leagle hear, my right manifold has a crack almost all the way through so i went to the muffeler shop and had them put a flowmaster 40 series on(way too quiet) and i had him look at the exaust manifold he said"well,150 bucks for the manifold plus 300 dolars service to take the old manifold off and put a new one on". my question was gibson make a california legal set of header for my truck for $370.00 when i brought this up with the exhuast guy he said stay away from those unless u wanna be tightening up bolts on em every day, i know a lot of people with headers and they dont do that, do should i stick with a new factory exhaust manifold or go with the CA legal headers, thanks for all your oppinions proud to be a member.

[95 F150]

Yamaha, 300 hundred dollars to remove and replace an exhaust manifold lol, I think I'm in the wrong line of work . I like the header Idea myself, I'm running a set of shorty headers on my truck and the bolts never loosen up.

If you decide to go the header route you should consider doing the install yourself. A few days before removing the stock exhaust manifolds you need to start soaking all the manifold bolts with penetrating oil to ease removal. Quality header gaskets are a must, I'm running Percy's aluminum header gaskets with great results. When I did the install I used a bead of ultra copper around the exhaust ports on both sides of the gaskets and let it tack up for about 15 minutes before bolting the header on. After you get everything back together retorque the header bolts everyday for a week and you'll never have to worry about bolts loosening up

[yamaha4400]

would you recamend using locktight?? not shure if its a good idea. thanks for your reply

[BSHORT]

Flange Thickness On The Header Makes A Big Difference With Leaks. Use A Quality Header, Gasket, And Bolts For A Clean Install.