Well, it took some work and a bit of BFH but they are in. I don't recommend this install for the faint of heart.
Before the pics, here is the run down so far. I had to use a BFH to "clearance" the floor pan on both sides of the tranny tunnel. The engine also has to be raised about 1/2" on the driver's side to clear the steering shaft. Obviously the passenger side mounts will have to be raised about the same. The part number I used is Mac TFA793. They are a 1 5/8" ceramic coated header with a 2.5" primary. The Mac TFA9358 are the same part but not ceramic coated.
This was the icing on my exhaust cake. The rest of the exhaust is mandrel bent true dual at 2.5". This piece should allow my engine to finally breathe.
This was the icing on my exhaust cake. The rest of the exhaust is mandrel bent true dual at 2.5". This piece should allow my engine to finally breathe.
i gota question, useing a astro van stering shaft wouldnt work to clear the headers? Maybe thats only for use with 351's? And what did you do to the motor mounts to raise the motor up and still be stong enough to race? Just woundering, looks good though.
i gota question, useing a astro van stering shaft wouldnt work to clear the headers? Maybe thats only for use with 351's? And what did you do to the motor mounts to raise the motor up and still be stong enough to race? Just woundering, looks good though.
Not sure about that. I had been looking at a fox body Mustang and their steering shaft is similar to ours but theirs has both joints in the engine bay and ours has one inside the car and then the rag joint in the engine bay.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. Allan had already done this mod but Mac has changed these headers slightly since he did it. His did clear the floor pan ok but he had to lift the engine more to get them to clear the steering shaft. At the end of the day I only had to lift the driver's side of the engine 3/8" or so and I did that by using Grade 8 bolts that were a bit longer than the stock bolts and 3 relatively thick washers. It should still be plenty strong.
As for beating on the floor pan, I would say that it would be better to cut open the pan and then weld in a hump for clearance but that would be a lot more work and it requires skills I just don't have.
nice work, randy. very informative. dont forget to add more bolts and tighten the others looks like you didnt do the shaft mod, correct? did raising the engine cause interference with the floor pan?
nice work, randy. very informative. dont forget to add more bolts and tighten the others looks like you didnt do the shaft mod, correct? did raising the engine cause interference with the floor pan?
Yeah, some of the bolts are bit of a pain to get tight when the car is that high off the ground. I will finish tightening those when I lower the car back to the ground.
Definitely did not do the steering mod. That excercise would have been too costly while reducing the safety factor since it gets rid of the collapsable steering shaft.
The engine didn't cause interference with the floorpan because the engine was raised as much as the extra space was needed to allow the flange on the collector to properly clear. If the headers stuck down about 1/2" more they would have probably cleared perfectly on all counts.
I'm not sure I recommend doing this mod for those that aren't willing to make the modification I made. It can be a lot of work and I still have some fab work to do so that I can connect the rest of the exhaust to the headers.
Those are two choices out of three really. The down side to my choice is beating on the floorpan. The down side to the steering mod is the safety concern since you won't have a collapsable shaft. The third choice is to build your own custom headers or pay somone else to do it.
Heh...that's the "custom" solution I am talking about.
The collapsable steering shaft is designed to collapse during an impact instead of spearing the driver or driving the steering wheel into the driver. If all manufacturers have seen it as a necessary safety item then I would tend to stick with them on that idea.
Thanks for the pics and info. Too bad they don't support the MN12 platform very well in the aftermarket...
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