When I heard they were discontinuing these headers I borrowed some money and snagged a set. They've been serving very nicely as a decoration in my room for a long time now and today I decided it was time to install them. I've got some pictures of my progress and some questions at the bottom of this post.

Here is my L05 in all her glory, as she stood this morning before I started.



The goods.



I removed lots of things as you can see here, including the AC box, in preperation for installing the headers.




Believe it or not very manifold bolt came out with just a 9/16" socket on your typical craftsman 3/8" drive ratchet. I didn't need a breaker bar on any of them and I didn't use any penetrating oil. Must this California climate!


The surface of my driver side head. Should I polish it up before I install the headers? Now is the time to change those spark plugs I guess!



Engine bay



I removed this section of the steering shaft to get the driver side header to fit. I mocked everything up and the header does NOT touch the steering shaft, and the passenger side header does NOT hit the frame anywhere. I was extremely relieved because of the horror stories I read on this site.



Two pics of garbage stock stuff compared to the SLP headers and y-pipe.








Questions: I need some header bolts and gaskets. I want to do things right the first time even if it means spending some extra money on these things. What brand/style header bolts (AND WHAT SIZE???) are best and what brand gaskets should I get?

 

Looks great!
Hey I live in Antioch, good to see someone local!

 

they should be 3/8" and im using 1" long because of the real thick flanges, dont use 3/4 they will fall out! i lost the back 4 bolts in 1 month. there are 4 that need to be long and they are not included in the install kit, if you got one. they need to have a small head, im using allen head bolts. there is just no room for much else next to the tubes. 12 pt works as well, and i had ro grind down my wrench a little to get it to fit in some of the tight areas

 

Locking header bolts are the way to go. Do it once and never have to worry about them again. Not sure on the size though.....

 

I had someone install tha same headers and they royally screwed the headers up. ruin one primary literally dented in in half. bacause he was to lazy to move the steering shaft. i'll be posting some info about the company on the forums. good job on the install.

 

When I bought mine I just got the install kit with them. Came with gaskets and bolts!

 

Take out the steering column; slot the 3 screw holes where it goes through the firewall, so that you can slide it about ½" over toward the fender. That will cure the steering shaft interference that you will surely have otherwise.

The right front brake line will almost surely have to be moved out of the way.

Yes you should clean up the head surfaces; a Roloc pad works great.

Use the Mr Gasket header bolts that have the little washers. You might have to buy a set of their copper gaskets to get the bolts ($$$); which might or might not fit. They work great if they do, but if they don't .... well, they'll leak like hell, same as anything else. Look at the raised sealing bead on them; if that bead contacts the flange surface on the head all the way around (look especially at the corners of the ports), and contacts the flange on the headers all the way around (look particularly at the top corner of the ports), then they'll work. If the sealing bead doesn't squarely contact those sealing surfaces, then they WILL eventually leak. If they won't work, use only the bolts, and get a set of Mr G Ultra-Seal or the FelPro ones.

Instead of the composition donuts SLP gives you, go get the solid metal ones from the parts store. Take the SLP ones with you and match them. I think the one for a early 70s Chevy full-size car with a 454, like say a 73, is the right one. But match it to be sure.

They're good quality headers, you should get good service out of them. I love mine.

 

I used the kit from SLP. What a waste of money. I replaced them after about 2-3 months with these iron donuts as described above, I think the parts guy said they were for a '73 Chevy Pickup with a 350. Also used FelPro flange gaskets. Been running now for 18 mos. with no problems

 

Those headers look pretty damn nice. Too bad SLP already stopped selling the headers w/air...

Looks like when i finally get headers its gonna be 2055's!! (not that thats a bad thing).

After the install, please tell us your opinions on the performance increase!

 

Anything to be aware of when I start this thing for the first time with headers? I will be running straight Y-pipe for at most a day or two until I can at least get a muffler welded to the Y pipe temporarily. Cat and full catback soon when I can save the $$$. I got new plug wires with all 90* boots and routed them nicely away from the headers. The collector flanges are bolted as tight as I feel comfortable tightening them and same with the header bolts. I went with standard grade 8 allen head bolts and a washer. None of the bolts gave me any trouble. I did use copper header gaskets but I did not clean up the sealing surface of the head before torquing them down, was this a fatal mistake? Something worth spending money on new gaskets to take all this apart for? Or should I give it a go and hope for the best?

Can somebody give me an idea of how much torque it takes to properly crush these gaskets?

And yes, the SLP installation kit was total bullshit. I sent it back, it had all wrong size bolts, cheap gaskets, it did NOT come with everything I needed for a smooth install, and worst of all, it was $100. I got stuff that is much better than the crap in that kit and I spent about $50-60 for everything.

 

Headers usually open up a nasty can of worms as far as burnt plug wires go.. keep your eye on them and use zipties liberally. When you start it be prepared for the headers to smoke quite a bit and cook off any grease that's on them from the install, you may see smoke out of your Y-pipe due to the coating inside them cooking as well. It's all normal.

On most gaskets you need to completely clean the area, exhaust is the exception. I had old material on mine when I did the head swap, no problems. I don't forsee a problem in your future as long as the bolts are tight.

Just tighten them as tight as you can get them without stripping them. Mine are probably torqued to near 30 ft-lbs, no problems.

What you will NEED to do is retighten the bolts. I've used this pattern everytime:

- After 5 heat cycles
- After 1 week
- After 1 month, and every month thereafter.

If you don't retighten them they'll decide they want to back out and you'll get a blown gasket. Ask me how I know

 

When you change the plugs make sure you get the "shorty" plugs from Accel or NGK UR-5's. Makes life a lot eaiser.

Auggie

 

Just finished up and took it for a spin....straight y pipe is downright rediculous. They smoked a bit at first but stopped shortly. Everything else seems good though. My temperature guage no longer works...I must have disconected it, where is that connector?

 

Yeah its probably still disconnected. Here is where the sensor is and the connection is just a wire with a spade type terminal on the end.

 

^^^ That has to be the best picture with diagram I've seen yet. Why couldn't the Helms/Chilton manuals have pics like that?

 

have any sensors on the passenger side engine block? got pics? how much room do you have between the collector and starter? can you post more pics please. thanks.

 

And to help her look more glorious, freshen-up that air cleaner lid and add this...

http://www.moderndaymuscle.com/inc/sdetail/780

 

I will have the same headers going on my engine as find time to work on it.

 

These pics make my car look like crap! Anyway, here they are:











Fun to watch people's faces when you pass them on the left with just this.

 

Tools to tighten header bolts. None gave me any real trouble, you just need a little ingenuity.

The easy ones you can get with just this. 3/8" drive ratchet with 5/16" allen drive socket (with a mini extension) that I ground down just enough to fit in the bolt head without binding on the header primary.



The harder ones you need this. It's a 5/16" allen key with an 3/8" drive 11mm socket and 10" extension over it for leverage.



For the hardest one, driver side closest to the firewall, you need this and you have to get it from underneath. It's a 7/8" socket w/ 10" extension slipped over the handle of a 3/8" drive ratchet as shown above.

 

This has been a good thread. This past Saturday I did a sparkplug replacement. I replaced a set of Bosch platinums with a set of AC Delco's. Well the rumor is the longer plugs are more difficult to install, about 1/2 inch longer than the Bosch plugs but you can get them in and if you use 90* boots the plug wires fit with about 5/8" clearance with the headers. My SLP headers are 1 3/4" without AIR. I have heard Bosch platinums had a tendacy to misfire with ignition boxes so I decided to try and lo and behold the engine does run smoother and doesn't have the constant misfire at idle it had with the Bosch plugs.