1989 trans am
5.7 TPI v8

forgive me if this is a weird question.

I've been having a weird "clicking" sound that seems to be coming from under my dash on the driver's side. (think right above your shins)
I did some looking around on here, and thought there might be an exhaust leak. I got under the car today and noticed something that i thought was weird.

so here's my question:
on a set of headers, should there be a bolt holding the headers to the block on the very far back towards the firewall? On my headers, there are 2 bolts towards the front (one on each side of the exhaust tube), 2 in the middle, (one on each side of a pair of exhaust tubes), but one 1 in front of the rear tube.

I checked the passenger side header and it's the same. Is this correct?

 

Your headers should have 6 bolts per side.

1 bolt on each side of front and rear tubes, 1 bolt on each side if the two center tubes.

.O.=.OO.=.O.

Will look something like the above. The bold dots are the bolts

 

I cant recommend locking header bolts and copper flange gaskets enough. they put an END to constantly having to re tighten them and dealing with blown gaskets. just a heads up. buy them . they are so very worth the money

 

thanks for the info.

i don't know why, but when my headers were installed, they only used 5 bolts on each side.

.0.=.00.=.0

There's no bolt on the rear (toward the firewall). I guess i'll be taking my car in.

....i wonder if this might be causing my wierd noises.....

 

i'll go get a set of bolts (any one which kind of the top of their head?) and try and put one in.

 

The reason why yours does not have the rear bolts is cause whoever put them on is lazy and didn't want to deal with the major PITA to install the rear bolts. Those are the 2 hardest to get to, install, and tighten bolts on the headers.

Locking bolts are great, I agree with that but a common reduced head header bolt works fine most of the time.

Get ones with a 3/8" wrenching rather than the common 7/16" heads. Easier to fit a 3/8" wrench and/or socket

One of these would work great
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/mi...make/chevrolet
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/su...make/chevrolet
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/tr...make/chevrolet

 

header bolts with a 3/8" head are the way to go... sometimes you have to leave all of them loose until you have all of them started or the tubes get in the way of allowing some bolts to start: this is what might have happened here... someone that didn't know what they were doing was sick of trying to get the stupid headers to fit and just decided that if it needed all the bolts they would have made it easy... so they tightened up the 5 that they had on each side and went out to do some burnouts... or maybe the bolts loosened up and fell out, it's been known to happen..
putting a wrench on all of the header bolts to snug them down is just something you get used to doing when you are dicking around under the hood on a saturday afternoon..

i also recommend the copper header gaskets, they are the bomb..

 

I always use these bolts. 5/16 head instead of 3/8 and 1" long they tend to stay tight longer.


http://www.summitracing.com/parts/arp-100-1110

 

Once properly tightened regular bolts would be fine. I haven't had to touch mine in years.

 

I use red Loctite on all my header gaskets, I use paper gaskets with the Loctite. I haven't had one leak since. Even if my bolts come loose, they remain sealed... (2 yrs so far).

 

i'll see if i can pick up some bolts today at the store.

do i need to put anything on the bolt threads or just screw them in?
thanks for all the good tips and info.

 

Some loctite never hurts but yeah, you just screw them in. Keep the wrench in your car and check the bolts at the end of every day or so. You'll have to keep tightening them each time until they finally seat for good. If you have aluminum heads be careful not to over-tighten them.

 

got some bolts.
Didn't go in as easy as i hoped! I think i'll have to loosen them all up to get the new one started.
Also, if i loosen everything up, do i need to take everything off and put on new gaskets?

 

If they're the cheap paper gaskets then you might as well. But it's not a necessity.