That looks great! Glad to see someone else using the thermostatic air cleaner with headers.

Did you fabricate that "stove" around the header pipe, or did it come with your headers?

And how is it attached?

 

This is very helpful to see this way. Thanks for sharing.

 

On some engines, yes. I am not familiar with the 351M, but I *think* those engines have the thermostatic choke stove in the intake manifold. If so, there will be two tubes running into a small plate that is bolted to the intake manifold. These tubes draw heat from the exhaust that passes through the intake manifold. The purpose of this stove is to operate the thermostatic choke on the stock Motorcraft carburetor.

The 302/351W engines used a choke stove chamber that was made into the passenger side exhaust manifold. A rubber hose connects to the carburetor air horn to draw in filtered air through the fresh air hose, which goes into the bottom of the choke stove chamber, up through the insulated hot air tube," and into the choke assembly:

 

The heat stoves are actually a Ford part number.. These were factory on the '85 5.0 Mustang GT.
These engines had a carburetor and headers thus the need for the dual heat stoves. The stoves
were removed from the factory headers and welded on to the aftermarket shorties...The air cleaner
is very similar to stock '85 mustang as well..

 

Very nice.

Sounds like you are setting your carbureted engine to run with the best Detroit EFI system, like I did.

 

Hi Fed, That is a nice clean stock truck you have.
I have a 78 F100. I got rid of the smog stuff. The paper/ Foil hose going to the canister you were asking about is part of the smog system you can disconnect all that if you want. There maybe an egr valve attached to a plate under the carb. Unless you have to smog test like the Poor Boys in California, you can get rid of both of those. Plug any holes that it leaves on the motor. I live in Canada, went four barrel back in the 90's with an open air cleaner. Pain in the *** to keep the truck running throughout the year between hot and cold weather. I went back to the stock air cleaner setup with the heat Riser tube off the manifold and the PCV valve hook up to it, starts and runs well through the temperature changes. I would hook the snorkel up to it for the cold air. The exhaust leak could be a loose bolt or a worn-out casket or something even deeper. Personally I'd find out what the leak is before you do any changes to the exhaust. You could install headers for better performance but if it's just a cruiser the stock manifolds work okay throw some dual exhaust on it.
by the looks of the rest of the engine compartment and fenders I would keep it all stock.

 

Strangely, my 460 engine doesn't have any heat stove pipe on the exhaust manifold. At least not that I can see. It's not a header, either. May be a replacement manifold, who knows.

I know the guy I bought the truck from mentioned he fixed the passenger side manifold exhaust leak (I guess that is a common thing on 460's), and / or he mentioned something about fixing a broken exhaust manifold stud. Maybe that's the one on the very front there.

So even if I wanted to at least hook up a stove/temp flapper/ original air cleaner to my aftermarket Edelbrock, it's not set up to just work. I'd have to get some sort of stove pipe on to the manifold