Well, at least we accomplished something.
We started early. We thought it would give us enough time. However, it's a Ford. It's a big V8. It's crammed under tons of "stuff" under the hood. Ugh. Well, here's the pics....
Ryan go a set of headers for something like $40 used. The headers are
Ford Motorsport's Shorty Headers. They pretty much match the stock header
setup except, as seen in this picture,
the new headers are not crimped as much where they meet the head. In the
interest of easing assembly, the huge crimps were put into the stock headers
so that putting in the header bolts was made much easier. After trying to
bolt in the new headers, we understand why they did this. It's hard.
Some preparation was done to the replacement headers. The welding was quite
intrusive into the exhaust flow area. A Black&Decker rotary tool (a very
handy Christmas present!) was used to smooth the areas a bit.
No need to go too crazy here. Turns out that the ports on the head are
actually a bit smaller than the header ports. A good way to see how much to
trim to to compare with the header gasket.
One of the first items to get out of the way is the export brace/strut
tower brace. Here's Ryan working on it.
The next item of interest is removing the intake "stuff". Remember to
block off the intake with something to keep dirt and parts! from entering.
Look at that!!!! This is the mess of emissions equiptment and air
conditioning crap you have to get through on the passenger's side! Needless
to say, we started with the driver side header. It gets a little better,
but this bolt
behind (what I think was) some more emissions control stuff would be a
treat to get to. You can also see the huge crimp areas on the stock headers
from this picture.
Well, work progressed with removal of the stock piece. Remove the spark
plug wires and get them out of your way. The bolts connecting
the header to the head were removed. The bolt sizes were 9/16". We
decided not to reuse the stock bolts - but bought new ones. The stock bolt
heads are big - and clearance problems with the non-crimped headers will
result. We used smaller bolts, but if I had to do it over, I would have
went with hex-key heads to avoid any clearance issues at all. In order
to get to where the header connects to the exhaust, we removed the
wheel and crawled under the car
to get to the lower connection. There's two bolts here - a decent extension
and a wobble (swivel joint) should be fine to break these 18mm bolts.
Once all the bolts are removed, you have to attempt to wiggle this crazy
shaped piece of metal out of a hole that is invariably the wrong size no
matter what. The header has to come out the top (unless you wanna drop the
front sub-frame).
Removal of the oil dipstick is key. Other things that
get in the way are the brake lines, and the emissions (or whatever) solid
line running across the area you want to remove the header from.
Once the old header is removed, use a blade to remove old gasket material. Wiggle the new header into place (almost as bad as getting the old one out). The hardest part now, is getting the header to align to the bolt holes in the head, and to align with the rest of the exhaust. The best thing to do is not bolt the lower flange until the head bolts are installed. We had to use a jack and a lever to either lift up on or pull down on the exhaust itself. This allowed us to get one bolt in the head, and then change the angle of the header (rotating it around the bolt) until other holes lines up. The was HARD! The header, without assistance, sits too high on the front bolt holes and too low on the rear.
Well, in the end, we bolted it all back up. Remember to bolt the lower bolts, as well as put the oil dipstick back in. The dipstick mounting bolt will not fit with the new headers. The dipstick bracket, itself, won't fit either - as it's too wide to fit without the header crimping. I suggest fabricating a piece to attatch to a header bolt and drilling the original bracket to connect it to the new piece. Put the plug wires back in place, and the intake and strut bar back.
Here's the finish:
Yes, that is only the driver's side!! However, the car won't be driven much more than 20 miles before the next install attempt for the passenger side (Easter break). Owner lives in NYC area - and parking is expensive - so he only brings the car out for nice weather. I'm not looking forward to this other side.
One last comment. If you plan to do both sides (like we originally did), but run into issues that keep you from that goal, you can drive the car with only one header installed - no problem. However, if you removed the plug wires on BOTH sides - remember to put them ALL back when cleaning up for only one side. I won't tell you how I know this. I'll just say:
Ryan: "It's not idling right."
Phil: "Why is there exhaust only coming out the left side tailpipe?"
Ryan: "With it floored, I can barely get it up the driveway."
Phil: "OH! This could be the problem!!!!" After looking under the hood.
To this day, no one accepts responsibility for the passenger side plug wires.