The headers i bought "headman headers" don't have a spot for this emissions device that is comming out of my exhaust. I think it an A.I.R unit. And what is a A.I.R unit. Can i live without it?

 

The A.I.R. pump, also a smog pump basically pumps fresh air into your exhausts manifolds. Fresh air mixes with very hot exhaust coming out of your engine and the air ignites the hot unburnt fuel causing it to burn out so that no unburnt fuel exits your exhaust.
So basically, no, you don't need it, Before me and my buds would take the smog pumps off and plug the holes in the manifolds with threaded brass plugs.
You don't get any real gain in horspower, we just did it to clean up the engine compartment.
Good luck.

 

If you have to go through an emissions inspection like we do in Va. you will need to have the AIR pump working. Inspectors frown when you disconnect their babies.

 

ooh yea, forgot to mention that that little point.
I keep forgetting there is a world outside of Texas.
Good for me that inspectors don't care to much to look under your hood down here unless it's smoking or leaking a noticable amount of oil.
Now California, :rolleyes thats a whole new story.
Good luck bro.

 

I, too, live in Texas, and this is the reason I don't have headers on my Bronco. There's several other components on the exhaust side of the motor in addition to the "smog pump" that are deleted with headers, and no muffler shop in my area will do the install, much less pass inspection without the pollution stuff. If your state's codes allow you to do so, then unhook and plug anything hooked to the factory exhaust manifolds.

 

There are several in the San Antonio area that won't, but there is a nice little number of them that will. And it's nice to find places that don't do full inspections.

 

Hey thanks everyone for the input, My friend does my emissions inspec so he will avoid looking under the hood. I will let you know how i do in sept when my inspection is up.

 

Given the posts I have read in this thread, its interesting to me the Tommy Vaughn Ford in Houston sells Bassni's Street Thunder headers and stainless exhaust systems. Maybe thats because the Bassani systems retain the emmissions equipment ports and a catalytic converter.

Air injection to the heads requires no special holes or ports in the exhaust manifolds or headers for that matter. The smog pump introduces fresh air into the heads via a checkvalve and crossover (steel) tube at the back of the 302 and 351 EFI engines that spans between the ports on the heads. (Earlier models have two seperate hoses and check valves, one to each head I believe.) The only other location for air injection is into the catalytic converter which is well beyond the headers in the system. All 302 and 351c engines had the air injection cast into the heads after 1976. The 300 I-6 is the only engine that still had an external air injection manifold later than that. So, A.I.R. injection should not need any special holes or ports in the headers.

What you WILL need is the port for the O2 sensor which in the original equipment, is mounted at the convergence of the two arms of the Y-pipe (where they come together). This port is a threaded female port (can't recall the thread pitch right now) and its mounted there so that the sensor gets exhaust information from BOTH banks of cylinders. If you aren't removing the stock Y-pipe, this should present no problems though.

I don't know what year your Bronco is, but I am fairly certain this is true for all EFI V8's up to 95. 1996 saw the introduction of the OBDII system which changed the whole situation.