Had a look under the truck this evening. You know what ... I am thinking that trying to get anything in there other than the slim stock manifold is going to be troublesome. There just isn't much clearance to work with anything else in that space. Especially on the driver's side because of the steering shafts and electrical. On the other side there are coolant hoses and electrical also very near and above the manifold. That is probably what he was griping about wrt to having more problems. It is probably the difficulty at installing headers and then difficulty controlling heat and shielding for protection of other stuff in the engine bay from the bulbous header tubes.

I am going to sleep on it, however I am pretty sure that I am going to back out and return to plan A. Which is to just go after the new bolts, new gasket, new shields. If I find a damaged manifold when I take it out to do the bolts and gaskets, then I will just get a like for like replacement. I know I will miss out on some rumble and maybe a bit of power improvement that headers have to offer. But I really do not need an install headache at this time, there are other things I need to work on the truck too and would get grumpy pretty fast if burning up my time and patience on elbowing in exhaust pipes and protection from future heat damages. The truck made over 200k up to this point without a single exhaust problem. Simply replacing the rusty weakened manifold bolts and rotted shields is probably the best solution at this point.


Btw - here is a picture of the truck, just for giggles.