355 header surprise (good)

Suspected a leak, cut the skin open, and found .... no leaks. The header was in very good shape. No holes, no cracks, no crushed pipes. What did look bad is all the heat insulation has broken down. So, I taped the pipes with insulation tape and welded the skin back on. So not all 355 headers go bad after all.
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The header looks great.
How many miles on the car?
Are you going to check both sides?

 

22,000 miles. No I am not going to check the other side since it did not give me any reason to look. I did a pressure test and it passed too. So i will quite while I am ahead.

The reason I cut this side open is because I say some steam coming off from it when i started the car. It must have been some water dripping into the header from outside and not from inside. It passed a water bath test so no leaks.

 

Outstanding! We see so many threads about failures, it's nice to see a thread about a part that hasn't failed. The fact that the insulation is coming apart suggests that these headers have been on the car for a while. Do you think they're the original set?

 

Yes, it looks like the original one.

 

Those have been replaced once before, they are the later design with the air injection tubes going into the primary tubes at right angles. The air injection tubes on an original 96 header would have entered the primarys at closer to a 45 degree angle on the outer cylinders.

Look closely at the bundle where 6, 7 and 8 all come together at the first turn of #8. Look for deformation in any of those 3 tubes as this would be an early indication of a pending failure a ways out.

Those are just an incredibly nicely built header. Imagine the job of bending those tubes in one piece!

 

Thanks Dave. Learned something new today.
The records did not say anything about a header replacement. That should have been in there somewhere. Anyway, these pictures now become part of the records. No deformation of any kind on any of the pipes.

 

Great news!

 

With my 355 I am going to pull the heat shields and if all checks out just replace the fiberglass insulation.
But instead of welding the heat shields back on I am going to weld tabs on the heat shields themselve and just rivet (or use screws) the two heat shields together so that they can easily be removed for inspection in future.
I still have the original headers with the 45 degree rails.....so it should be interesting to see what condition they are in.

 

Here's how the rebuilt ones look, before the shields and insulation go back on:
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Daniel

Try that picture again in 20K miles and see if it is still so shiny