I have hedman longtubes on my car, and I'm in the middle of my T-5 swap. I went to place the bellhousing over the clutch assy, and noticed that it won't go on and sit flush with the engine block. After a minute of investigating, it turns out that my drivers side collector is interfering with the slave cyl. mounting area on the bellhousing.

Which brings me to my question: Whats the best way to modify the headers? My first thought was to heat all the primaries to a glowing red and then bend the header down. But this might distort the tubes, and it would probably be a pain in the butt to keep all four primaries at the right temp. My second idea is to cut and section the header, adding in about 1.5-2" length to it. This should lower the collector down and leave about .5" clearance for me.

What is the best choice? Is there something painfully obvious I'm missing with this? An easier option?

Also, what do you guys with manuals do to prevent the slave from overheating? Being that close to the header, would it be wise to heatwrap the header and the slave cyl?

Thanks

 

How much does it need to move? If it isn't much, heating and bending is probably your best bet.

 

about 1" to clear, but I'd like to add a little more clearance to prevent the slave from heating up to bad.

 

If it just has to move outward a bit (not forward or back) then you could just heat up the tubes along the flange (for the head, not collector) and pull the tubes up a little.

 

Not a bad idea, thanks I could even leave it in the car if I do it that way.

 

Heat the primaries, tweak the tubes, collapse the primaries.

Cut/add/subtract/weld, but don't try to bend headers by heating the primaries.

 

What about cold bending? Or would that just crack the welds or flanges?

 

That would crack welds or tubes, or crimp the tubes.

 

The best way I found is to run the car for a bit to heat up the headers....then they will bend fairly easy with a stratigically placed pry bar. For the slave...I made my own heat shield out of 6061 T6 aluminum...I'll snap a pic of it later so you can see. BTW, my slave is plastic (T56) and I have had no problems with it getting too hot with the shield.

 

Here's a pic of my heat shield.

 

That's a really clean job on the heat shield. I'll probably try that before I spend the money on the heat wrap then, I think we still have some aluminum scrap laying around.

I -think- my headers are only 18 gauge tubing, so maybe they will bend easier like you said. I'll "feel it out" and see if I can't tweak em a bit. If not, I'll have to do like five7 said and cut 'em up

On a side note, anyone know why the site has been down so frequently lately?