So, Im not actually contemplating suicide, but I do need to vent my frustrations regarding installing my shorty headers. I started Friday, and right off the bat I rounded off one of the collector nuts. Great way to start off, huh? I ended up getting a couple of them out, but I was tired of not being able to get to the other bolts very well, so I decided to unbolt the manifolds from the heads and drop them and the exhaust down. This ended up being a pretty good idea and went relatively drama-free until I forgot to remove my rear O2 sensor and ended up severing the wires running to them...dang it. With a little more room to work with, I was able to remove the other bolts and get the exhaust and manifolds out of the way. Now on to removing the old manifold studs. Three of them came pretty easy with the double nut technique, but the fourth wouldnt budge. I tried everything I knew to no avail. Finally, I found a pipe wrench that was small enough to fit down in that area and stuck a cheater pipe on the end of it and got it off. Now for putting in the new headers. Seems like that would be the easy part, but no. At best the least freaking ridiculous part. Turns out the bolts that they sent me were the wrong size...of course. Monday I went to NAPA and picked up some grade 8 bolts the correct size. Just getting each bolt started in the hole is a pain, but on top of that I can only get a ratchet on half of them and the others take a crescent wrench 1/8 of a turn at a time. And that is where I am now. Ive got the passenger side header on and Ive got half the bolts I the driver's side. Hopefully I'm in the downhill stretch now.

 

I feel your pain on those collector bolts...I did battle with them when I was installing my ss flowmaster cat a couple weeks ago. After trying to remove the first one and just rounding the nut off, I said to hell with it and just cut them all off with a dremel and put in nice grade 8 hardware. Should make installing shorty headers a little less miserable when the time comes to do them on those header bolts, did you soak them in pb blaster after driving every day for a week? I hear it works wonders if you go through that routine before trying to remove them...

 

I didn't soak them that often, but I did three or four times over the course of the past month or so. I also forgot to mention that when the headers first came in the flanges weren't straight but very noticeably warped so I cut the flanges in between the inner and outer tubes (which worked quite well) but where I messed up was cutting the gaskets to match. I caused myself a lot of extra work trying to hold all the miniature gaskets in place instead of leaving them one piece, at least it'll look a little cleaner.

 

i put a set of shorty headers on my 360 magnum,i will say this,it sucked!!!! it took me 2 days to do it and several bloody knuckles..lol..

 

I would imagine it would be considerably harder in a mid-size truck like the dakota! cramped working spaces equal not a fun install

 

I'm surprised you're having this much difficulty on these headers. When I did my shorty's the first time it took my 3 hours total to do them. I soaked as many bolts as I could with royal purple max film (works awesome). I had one stud that stripped out on us and we had to use a vise grip to turn it out and the collector bolts were a P.I.T.A to do as well but they came out eventually. I have stage 8 SS locking header bolts, they're so much better to come out than the regular bolts. I'd recommend them to you ever plan to switch bolts or take off the headers.

 

Anyone care to elaborate on this "double nut technique?"

 

2 nuts tightened together act as a bolt head and allows you to remove a stud.

 

Finally got them finished yesterday evening, but I still have a leak at the collector that I need to take care of. I know you guys like pics so I'll post some up when I get a chance. So of all the other guys who've installed headers, how many of y'all started it up with open headers? That was the only fun part for me lol, it sounded sick.

 

I have collector leakage too, my exhaust pipes don't fit all the way up on the header collector and they leak some. Mine sounded sick too when I started it up with open headers