I bought coated Bassani's for my '92 Bronco w/302. I am having a bit of a problem getting them to fit. It appears that I may have to grind part of the rear corner of the motor mount on the driver's side to get them to clear and on the passenger side the headers ball connection to the y-pipe is pretty close to the bell housing at the starter and I may not be able to make the bolts up to the y-pipe. Also the pipe connection from the exhaust air supply check valve on the back of the engine is at the wrong angle, (should have been nearly perpendicular to the exhaust pipe but its about 45 deg.)
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I bought a complete Bassani setup and really didn't expect any issues. I have checked the boxes I got and the part numbers on their website (50150-3, 50150-5, 50150-BC) and everything suggests I got the right headers, etc. The tag on the driver's side header is stamped 50150 also. The engine is a stock reman 302 from PowerPro sitting on stock replacement engine mounts.
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Has anyone else had any issues like this? I have contacted Bassani about this earlier today so I am waiting for a response from them right now.

I'm wondering if I got the wrong headers in the right boxes or if I just need to grab the grinder and modify everything to fit.

Sorry for the long post.

 

That's strange. I had no issues with mine on my '92 and later when I swapped them to the '93 everything went right in as easily as on the '92. No clearance or bind issues other than wrestling the passenger side one around all the other garbage suffocating that side of the engine bay. I'd be interested to know what you discover on this because everyone here will tell you I am a walking commercial for Bassani.

The few pieces I DID fabricate myself when I swapped the headers in were a handful of steel stand-offs to hold the brackets and such that had been mounted with the original manifold bolts in their original location. The manifold bolts were longer and stood out from the head further by nature of the manifold casting so I compensated for the header's lack of depth by adding the stand-offs. Otherwise, the Bassani system has performed flawlessly for me since day one.

 

I also had no issues other than getting the old headers off . I would suggest calling the party where purchased or look at a differnt site to see if they are an exact fit .Good luck TR

 

Thanks for the replies. I expected to be able to just bolt these right up but it looks like I will need to make a couple of modifications before they'll fit.

I made a quick (took me all day) tech album showing the issues that I'm having. If y'all get a chance I'd appreciate you taking a look to see if the headers look anything like yours.

I figured on having to fab some brackets to duplicate the original mounting locations of several items as GreyStreak92 has done. I was considering stainless spacers with longer bolts at the proper locations and lock washers all around since I think the bolts may have a tendency to back off over time and several are in difficult spots.

I also highly recommend chasing the threads for the exhaust manifolds on the block before you take the engine off of the stand so your bolts will easily make up to the proper torque, something that I remembered to do after I had already installed the engine. Oh well, there's always next time.

I remain impressed with the quality of the headers and everything else that I got. I just had the impression that they would just bolt right up so I am trying to be sure they sent the ones I needed.

 

Sorry, forgot to give the name of the gallery.

92 Engine Swap

has several pictures labeled for your amusement (and mine).

Thanks

 

A note about the air injection to the exhaust. If you aren't running a cat the air injection is a moot point. I remember my Y-pipe connections weren't identical to the OEM Y-pipe either. I bought the Y-pipe with the cat in it and used a chunk of high temp hose to complete the air injection plumbing. Now that the cat is dead the thing is still attached but doesn't serve any purpose.

The photos make it pretty clear what the issue is and I have to say that's a first for me. I had no such issues with mine. I never did an engine swap with mine though. Is it possible the engine mount you are using differs from the OEM unit or are they the originals?

 

Greystreak92 - Thanks for looking.

The original engine was a goner after 274K miles. It needed a complete rebuild so I opted for a replacement. I also replaced the motor mounts but the replacements are identical to the originals.

I do have a cat on the new exhaust (this part of N Texas requires emissions tests for inspection) and they did include a length of hose which is probably high-temp hose with the whole setup so I'm probably covered on that end without any major modifications.

Once I laid everything out and made the comparison, the small difference in the placement of the collector was obvious on the driver side header. It looks like it is about 3/8 inch closer to the block than the stock manifold and therefore it touches the motor mount at the back corner of the mount. That small difference makes me doubt that the tag is wrong (i.e. it is probably exactly what I ordered but with a minor deviation from the norm).

Once I confirm that with Bassani, I'll probably just jack up the engine, remove the motor mount and round off that corner and then bolt everything up. That assumes of course that the y-pipe will accommodate that small build difference. I hate to think I'll have to force a fit on something that looks so good.

Out of curiosity, does the driver's header that I have look similar to the one that you have?

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it.

 

Yes, actually it looks identical from what I can tell. Now if the tolerances are different and the fit is off, I can't tell from the photos. Since you can verify the fit against everything you have and its a stock replacement motor I should think you would have no trouble getting Bassani to look into this problem for you. The side-by-side comparison photo is hard to argue with.

 

Greystreak92 - You were right. I called Bassani and emailed the pictures posted in the gallery and a couple of others and they were happy to look at them.

They had never seen this issue either. As the photos show, the collector flange is closer to the block because of the extra width of the outlet versus stock but even at that, they had never had anyone else report this problem.

Their R&D guy looked at everything and concluded that either the parts had shifted in the jig as it was being welded up, causing the difference or the motor mount I'm using now is not identical to the OEM mount that they used in their die build. I threw the old mounts away so I can't show any photo comparisons but I matched them to the new mounts before installing and there were no differences. That doesn't mean that at some point during a previous maintenance call at the dealership that the mounts weren't replaced. That could have happened since I didn't start doing all the maintenance on this myself until it went from daily driver to fourth set of wheels in a two-driver family.

Anyway, as a result of their analysis of the photos I provided, they are sending me a replacement driver's side header in a swap for the one that I currently have that doesn't fit correctly. I will send the current one back to them so they can compare it over there and I'll let them know whether that fixed the issue or improved anything.

Excellent customer service and way above what I expected since I actually bought the headers about 18 months ago and have had them, and the engine swap project, on hold since then because - it's the fourth set of wheels, gas prices went way up since I started it making this Bronco the least economical vehicle in the stable, I lost my roundtuit, you name it - the project went on hold and I just got back to it the last week of December.


I would highly recommend these headers and this company to anyone looking to make this mod to their Bronco. It's good to know that my money went to people who have such a high level of pride in their products.

I searched these forums for a good while researching headers before settling on Bassani and I know I made the right choice.

One additional IMPORTANT NOTE:

As I was talking to Kurt (Curt?) from R&D he told me that they had been on the verge of discontinuing the Bronco headers because they didn't sell enough of them to make it worthwhile. They would scrap the dies and move on to other things, a simple business decision on their part. He said that they had a sudden surge in orders for Bronco headers last summer or they would have discontinued them.

In my opinion this would be a bad thing for Bronco owners, losing a supplier of such high quality parts. I don't know what we as Bronco owners can do about it except to buy Bassani headers when we are upgrading our rigs.

Sorry for the long post. I had a lot to add and will let everyone know how the new header fits when it gets here.

 

Sounds like my experience with Bassani as well. Glad they were everything I had come to expect from them. Here's hoping the replacement rectifies the problem.