Question on removing/installing headers

Yea I know Terry, have done for years. He and another guy (chas?) were some of the first to document various procedures years ago on the uk forum. Fcars.

 

Moving right along, old header off. No big deal.

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New header on. Getting it over the rear two studs took a bit of finagling and the center two nut were a little difficult to get started, particularly since I have Dupuytren's contracture in both hands. Leaving the front and rear top nuts as loose as possible and the bottom one loose gives more room to get your hand between the head and the air injection pipe. Frankly, poorly engineered. But driver's side is done. About 1 1/2 hrs from where I started today, including coming int he house to warm up a couple of time. Now, do I take off the cam coves and paint them or wait until the next major.


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Wait until next major to pull the cam covers. They are easy to mark up when reinstalling and it would be hard to do so properly with engine in imo.

 

Just a little update that might be of interest. I scoped the driver's side OE header that I replaced and it shows no signs of deformation or cracks in any of the tubes. I can see some areas that have been subject to higher heat, apparently in areas where exhaust gases ejected from the heads impinge on the tubes. These are just small blemished areas. It will be interesting to how where the passenger's side header failed, cracks or melt through. It will also be interesting to see if there is any indication of 1-4 running rich due to excess air getting in the the exhaust stream. Plugs don't indicate such.

 

Is there a particular direction that the manifold gaskets have to be facing (ie. there is a top and a bottom to the gaskets) when mating to the engine?

Also, I would imagine that unless the headers are really bad that the cracks could be hard to see? My understanding is that they tend to crack around where the injection pipes meet the manifold, but could also crack around where the individual tubes combine. I have learned that the cars can develop a noise that sounds like 'lifter' tick but its really the cracks in the header letting sound "leak" out.

 

Yes. You'll be able to tell how they fit as long as you're observant. If you put them on wrong, the gasket will block part of the exhaust port.

 

I mounted the gaskets with the same orientation as the old ones but based on the type of gasket I don't see where it would make a difference.

The headers were leak tested. The 5-8 bank header did (does) not leak. There are no cracks. I scoped it basically to see if there were any deformations of the tubes, as is show in some pictures, like this one. There were none in my 5-8 header. My 1-4 header showed leaks but due to the shields I was not able to determine where. However, it was apparent it was not around the air injection tubes they are completely exposed. When I remove it I will scope it to see where it leaks.

If you look carefully at the picture below the top header, right most tube as a small light colored spot surrounded by rust. Similar "heat" spots were observed in all 4 tubes of my 5-8, but that was the extend of anything observable.

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Leak or not. Stock manifolds are fugly underneath the shields. Ferrari needs shields to mask the quality.

 

Just saw this thread. Good on you John for undertaking this. It ain’t easy at this age crawling around that engine.

Is that a hole in the lower pic above?

Where did you buy the Tubi from?

 

It's not that bad except this isn't the time of year for doing it in New England.

The picture is just an example from the internet. Not my headers.

I got the headers from Vivid Racing.

 

Do you have a lift? Does that make a difference?

 

No lift. Just on jack stands. No need for a lift.

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Time to finish this thread. Temps in the mid 40's today an raining so I decided to tackle the passenger side header. I ended up removing the oil tank just to have more room to work. Removing the old header nuts wasn't a problem but the header would not come off the lower rear most stud. So I unbolted the transmission mounts and jacked up the rear of the engine. That allowed the heard to come off the stud and from there is was easy to remove the old and put the new Tubi in place. Once in place all nuts except the upper on tubes 3 and 4 were relatively easy to install. No way I could get my old crippled hands in there. Only because of the reversed position was I able to get the nuts on 5 and 6 on the driver's side. So, what to do? The problem was getting the nuts started on the stud. After a little thought I made up a little tool that would allow me to position the nuts and spin them on. I wrapped the nut with 1/4" tape. Then I tool a stick of wood about 1/8 thick, 3/8 wide and 8 long. I wrapped one end with masking tape with the adhesive side out allowing me to stick the nut to the tape. This let me position the nuts on the studs and then by pulling on the (red) tape spinning the nut onto the studs. Think of starting a lawn mower or leaf blower. Worked perfectly. Now just have to get the rest of the exhaust back together. Not hard, but tedious. If an old fart, 74 yrs old can do it, so can you.

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Really nice John! I admire you tenacity!

 

Good on you John. Awesome thread mate. Great to see Old Farts having a red hot crack at these little jobs

 

Just the final nail in the coffin. Just to verify the effort was worth it I sealed off all the ports on the bad header (1-4, why is it always 1-4?) and redid the smoke test. You can see the smoke leaking out of the shields around the #3 and #4 tubes.The sound is from my compressor.

 

Hoo boy those are toast. Would love to see what the pipes look like. Are you gonna remove the clamshells?

 

Probably not going to open it up. I did probe with a borescope and didn't see anything. Probably just a crack. I'll look again when I have time. When you consider the pressure in the header from the compressor I think it really a pretty small leak. The borescope didn't show any obvious deformity like the headers pictured in post #32.

 

Let's open that *****!

 

That's some old man wisdom and ingenuity right there! . Well done

 

And the last of the last posts. Before I put the bumper back on I decided to do some touch up to the chips around the wheel well. One thing lead to another and I ended up painting the whole thing. I did all the prep/primer work, but since I don't have a paint booth I decided to have my local shop put the base and clear on it after I matched the paint. $420.

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Prep and primer is 80% of a paint job . Hopefully, you used good primer.

Bumper needs to be installed higher.

 

Not to worry Galsurit all the way.

 

What a baller.

 

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