Well, another busy day, but at least it was not at work.

I got up about an hour and half before church and decided to change the oil in the truck. While doing that, I noticed that I was getting surface rust on my new headers.

After church, my wife and I helped a friend paint her living room. Once I got home, I decided I would remove my headers and get them sand blasted, then paint them with POR 15 Exhaust manifold/header paint.

I already knew I had an exhaust leak at the headers and had contacted Sanderson Headers to get an idea from them on what to do. The mechanic who installed my engine used gaskets when they installed the headers. There headers are designed to fit so tight that I should not use a gasket. They told me to take them off, clean off the gasket and anything else, then apply a 1/8th inch bead of high-temp silicone around each port of the header, install them, and let it set for 24 hours before running them.

Here is a link to the headers I have.
http://www.sandersonheaders.com/prod...roducts_id=152

That is all good and fine, except there is one g*$%#@n header bolt I can't get to. It is on the passenger side, above the third sparkplug, bottom side of the exhaust port. I tried taking the starter out, but found the starter is trapped there by the header. Which made me realize I will need to remover the header every time I need to remove the starter.

So, anybody have any suggestions on how to get that last bolt out? The header had to be bolted on at one point.

On a fun note, after I disconnected the exhaust pipes from the headers, but before I removed any of the header bolts, I started up the truck. That was loud.. and really cool. I love the sound of a V8 without mufflers.

 

Ah, your not going to want to hear this..... But, I alway find it's easier to just disconnect the engine mount on the side I need to get to and jack up the motor for clearance and getting to such things. Is there room?

 

Guess what... I got it. After writing this post, I went searching for more information and they recommended a certain Snapon wrench. I remembered I had one similar. After spending more time looking for it than actually using it, I found it then got the last bolt out!!!!! I took out the starter too.

One other little interesting challenge was that I had to take the dipstick out to get the headers off the driver's side. That was no problem, just unique.

The starter is less than a year old, but I am going to have it tested by NAPA, where it came from. I might as well replace it now if it is bad.

Tomorrow, I am going to find someone to sandblast them and then I will paint them.

I bet it will not be as easy to install them as it was to remove them, but I will cross that one when I get to it.

Thanks for the tip AJ. I am hoping I wont have to disconnect the engine mount to reinstall them.

 

well fastmover i find that at times like that a lil reasearch always helps out or just the fact of getting away from the ordeal for a sec helps too glad it all worked out the dip stick on my H.O. motor has to be removed also to take out the drivers side header when running headers. as a matter of fact right now i'm looking for a set of smog legal headers

 

I got my headers back from the sand blaster. I will put the first coat of paint on tomorrow night. They look amazing.
[IMG][/IMG]

 

Lookin' good. What do you think of the quality of workmanship on those headers? I have a set of their block huggers on my 351C and was extremely impressed with the welding and fit on the engine. I've had other makers' stuff on some cars and had to really work at it to get them to fit.

 

The welds and quality are great. I will tell you how they fit when I put them back on.

 

He, he, he .....

Who is the manufacturer? I'm looking for cheapy headers for mine... So, maybe swap meet set?

 

AJ-
Sanderson Headers. There is a link in the first post to the headers I have.
See you Saturday.
KGS

 

Duh .... Lazy I guess, my sorries - AJ

Those are short tubes .... so, are there any longtubes out there? I thought I saw headman or hookers at Summit.

 

Aj Headman header make a great set of headers for our trucks you can get them through summit was just looking at them last night trying to beef up my lil H.O. motor a lil that and it had header on it in the mustang it came out of
ps did you get a chance to see my truck yet?
Earl
bigearl1369

 

Hey Earl, You may get a slow response from AJ. He's down in Turlock at the swap meet, and then heading over to work on Thumper tomorrow.

 

Thanks Big Earl - I think I'm getting a used set from a member. When I do the rebuild I'll probably cough up the dough for those Headman headers. Thanks for the info.

 

Well, here is an update. I noticed that big shiny thing called the sun was paying us a visit so I decided to rush home and put my newly painted headers back on my truck. I had taken out the starter before to test it since I can only get the it out when the headers are off. So I put it back in twice. The first time the heat shield and its cinch bands fell off so I had to fix them and reinstall the starter.

After that I cleaned the exhaust ports and removed all the old gasket chunks that stuck to it. This is important so the Sanderson headers can make a good seal on to the exhaust ports. I put some black silicon instant-gasket stuff on the passenger side header. I then put all 8 bolts on. After that I had to take my wife to Davis so I took a few hours off, happy knowing the hard side was done.

When I got home I prepped the exhaust ports the same way and did the same thing. Viola... the header went on. The instructions say to wait 24 hours to let the black instant gasket stuff set and harder. I will hook up the rest of the tail pipes tomorrow and start it up. The only glitch to that side was after I tightened all the bolts down and cleaned up, i noticed I'd forgotten to reconnect the f*#$&@g dipstick.

Now my big hope is that I fixed my exhaust leak. I will find out tomorrow.

I learned a bit from doing this. The first is that I can crawl up into the wheel well to get to some of the hard to reach header bolts. I also learned that according to Steve Christ's Big-Block Ford Engines book, you need to be careful about your spark plug wires. This is what he says.

So I put one on the opposite side of the wire comb from the other. I am not sure if it will make much of a difference, but it was interesting.

 

That's sort of old-school theory, Karl. Modern spark plug wires are so well insulated that induced firing between the wires is practically impossible. Just grab your wires somewhere in the middle (away from the ends where there's a better chance of spark leakage) while the engine is running and see if you get zapped. Most likely not, unless you've got a hole in the insulation of a wire that you didn't know about...

But still, it's free insurance so what the heck.

A neat trick if you do suspect a spark plug wire is shorting somewhere is to pop the hood at night in pitch darkness with the engine running. If there's a spark leak, you'll see it.

How did those new header bolts work out?