My father tells me to shut up everytime i mention headers to him.

 

Im sorry, hahahha Your dad is funny


They can be a bitch to install some of them you need to lift the engine in order to slide them in, some dont fit... most need coaxing from what i understand but they alllll are better than whats on there now

 

Give yourself a weekend.

 

Do you have all the smog stuff? At least its not TBI or TPI, those are kinda tricky. On my TransAm it took me about an hour. It doesn't have any smog, A/C, or heater. The passenger side just sliped in from up top. On the driver side, I had to move the dipstick out of the way but it also slid in from up top. On my Camaro, it took a while longer. It has all the smog equipment and A/C. You just need to make (or get) brackets for the A/C brackets as well as the smog thing that has the bracket bolted on to the stock manifold.
The hardest part was taking the manifolds off, and getting the brackets right so the pulleys are how they should be. By the way I used FlowTech headers. Not the best, but are way better than stock manifolds. Good Luck!

 

Since I went from a 305 to an older 350 I found it a lot easier to go with headers. You may need to get the Y pipe for the headers to make life easier. I had to raise the engine on one side by taking the motor mount bolt out then I was able to raise the engine enough to get the header in. I had to grind some material away on the power steering pumb bracket to get it to fit. Just take your time and follow the direction and you should be able to do it in a reasonable time.

 

if you go with shorty headers you should be alright they also make camaro shorty harders that are relatively easy to install

 

Yeah, Its not really that hard. Just get some shorty headers designed for a third gen. I know that on my friends 350 TBI the Hedman headers were a pain, but only 'cause of all the smog stuff getting in the way. My other friend's 82 Camaro It took two of us about half hour to change the gaskets on it (we had to pull the headers out). Which brings me to a good point. Whatever you do not use cheap gaskets. Exhaust leaks do not sound cool. Try to use some copper gaskets, you dont want to go through the trouble of changing gaskets after all the work it took just to put the headers on.

 

Took my brother and I 6hrs to install in the driveway. The AC was already out the car. The longest part was getting the manifolds off and clearing the way. Just tell your Dad that if you can't get headers how about a cam swap, I'm sure he would be happy to help with headers. Last year I did a cam swap outside in January (freezing my **** off) that was no fun.

 

Z-Man: 1 hour?? I can see how it'd be a helluva lot easier w/o A/C and AIR, but I just can't picture how you could get the old manifolds off, the old y-pipe off and the new headers and y-pipe in place in just 1 hour (unless you were just replacing the headers, same models as you already had, b/c of rust or something?). Maybe sometime we can have a race!

Are headers "hard" to install? I'd say more like time-consuming. I did mine by myself and it took me around 10 hours. I could see it going a lot faster if you had a helper and a whole lot faster if one or both of you were accomplished mechanics

 

ZMAN,
Ive done this job a couple of times and let me tell you,
theres more chance of getting budweiser up a cats **** with a fork than fitting headers in an hour.
PM

 

Well!!! All I did was unbolt the six bolts on each side. Like I said, I didn't have anything to get in my way so It was just simple unbolting. Before that, I had cut the manifolds off from the Y-pipe with a sawzall. All that was left was to pull them out, and clean the mating surfaces. After that I just slipped them in place while the outer bolts held the gaskets. The longest part was bolting all the bolts and making sure they were tight. That's what took up most of the hour. After that (not right after, I had to enjoy the open headers first!) I drove it a muffler shop thats about 5 min. from me and had them hook them up to a Y-pipe they made. It was a fun 5 mins. Anyway, technically I didn't have the headers done with in an hour. I did have them bolted onto the heads in about an hour, max was 1hr and 20min.

I didn't say I could so any car in an hour. I know that my friends' Camaros and Firebirds were a pain because they have all the accesories and smog air tubes all over the place!

Gheeeezzzz!!!!!!!!

 

By the way, It would take alot of courage and determination on my part to try to put headers on a car with TPI.

 

This was the first time me and my friend truely worked on my 90 5.0 RS and i can honestly say that it was pretty easy. The first day we removed the AC and took off the stock cat back. Second day we got both manifolds off along with the y pipe and started to prep for the headers. We finished early on the 3rd day. It was a 3 day weekend during the summer. It was a lot of fun and you feel really good after knowing that you did it yourself. I have a lot of confidence have doing this. I say do it yourself, there are all of good posts on the Exhaust boards that helped me out a lot. If it wasnt for thirdgen.org, i would have probably paid someone to do it. So do it yourself, oh yeah, and you will need a lot of tools of all shapes , sizes and kinds. Hope this helps

 

Nothing like doin the work yourself or with a couple of budies