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bending headers?

P

panteramatt

Member
Ok, as I posted before, I put some hooker headers on my 69. Well, the collector sits up too high. They need to come down about 3/4" and maybe even out a little. Is there a safe way to do this? They are ceramic coated so I dont want to ruin it.
 
Unfortunately the only way that I know of is to heat the header till it's red hot and then bend it with a pipe stuck in the end of the collector. The heat from this process will most likely mess up your header coating though.
 
I don't know if you're going to find a way to bend them w/o possibly disturbing the ceramic coat as they have to bend somewhat. Here's a thread where I asked for suggestions to bend my painted headers outward from the trans.:
http://www.stangfix.com/testforum/index.php/topic,6333.0.html

Took them to SellersRodShop (thanks Steve) and he used his porta power on them while I had them mounted to a spare block/heads and no trans. The Porta power pushed them out an 1" I believe, pushing from the rear of the block against the area where the collector starts.

Took them home and still needed some clearance as they still touched the sides of the trans pan, so I used a pry bar and wood blocks to get enough space to get a long steel bar between the trans and collector and slowly pryed away while heating the pipes with my 500W lamp (don't know if it helped but couldn't hurt I figured as it melts skin...).
With flanges cut off so I could see how much clearance I needed:
IMG_0720-1.jpg


Pry bar, wood spacer and long pry bar, which I slowly and reapeated pulled on at the end of the ~4ft. pipe, moved it to different spots along the collector:
IMG_0719-1.jpg


Spacer block left in while the pipes cooled to help keep them bent out:
IMG_0721-1.jpg



After working each side a few times, letting them sit with a larger wood block in there and the heat lamp on they moved at least another 1" to clear now. I also cut the flanges loose, rotated them and Steve welded them back on to give more clearance. I think I have 1/2" to 3/4" clearance on each side which I was told was sufficient to avoid overheating the trans.
hope this helps,
Jon
 
"panteramatt" said:
Ok, as I posted before, I put some hooker headers on my 69. Well, the collector sits up too high. They need to come down about 3/4" and maybe even out a little. Is there a safe way to do this? They are ceramic coated so I dont want to ruin it.
Click to expand...

My Hooker comp's fit like yours and are only painted. I'm toying with the idea of installing the Ron Morris 1" lowering motor mounts to take care of the problem, however, I need to verify it won't interfere with the p/s as I do not want to use the drop bracket. I suppose I could heat them up to bend or just take the car to a shop for a port-a-power session.
 
Tom, I'd give you a data point with the lowered motor mounts but I moved my engine back. The RM mounts only give you 1/2" drop, which most likely would cause clearance issues with the engine crossmember brace. I can tell you that I have plenty of clearance around the trans tunnel support, as can be seen in my T56 thread in my signature. That was with my mounts that give 1" drop.

Matt did you get your headers bent?
 
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