freakazooid52

Okay my 95 trans am is stock cept for a 1le elbow due to mine being ripped and it needs some performance upgrades.

I want to do headers and y pipe but my car has the stock manifolds still and i'd hate to break all the bolts off...

It has a 119k miles on the engine, anyone put headers on a high mileage car with none of the bolts needed for headers stuck in the head?

advice?

ss.slp.ls1

iTrader: (36)

I've done LT header installs on LT1's with many more miles than that and never snapped a header bolt. I always soak the header bolts and all of the rest of the exhaust bolts in PB blaster.

freakazooid52

well thats good news!. Im might have to do it this winter, since ill have a car to drive this time lol.

multmigs

iTrader: (2)

X2 on the PB blaster, I've used pretty much all of the other "penetrants" at work cause they always get whatever cheap stuff they can and that stuff is way better, you can just smell the difference really, nothing smells as strong as that and if you do it overnight or a few days ahead of time the bolts will almost fall out.....

Formula350

iTrader: (3)

Yep, blast the hell out of em And if they're not wanting to give, try to tighten them just SLIGHTLY. That sometimes breaks the bolt loose so you can then remove it. Just don't try to tighten it TOO hard, if it doesn't want to, don't force it. It would help if you got the engine a bit warm as well. Not HOT, but as warm as you can stand. I recommend using some of those Mechanics Gloves.

lt1noob

iTrader: (4)

pb blasters amazing

old93camaro

iTrader: (8)

Yea that what i was going to say if you let the car run a little while u can loosin up the bolts from the heat but not to hot...if worse come to worse i would take all the ones that would come out and knock the head off the ones that are giving you trouble and wiggle the manifold off to save you some extracting time.. long story short thats why both of my heads are off right now but atleast im upgrading my springs now

highflyin

iTrader: (16)

I did headers on 2 lt1s, one with 55K and another with 110k, and no bolts broke in the heads. Alot of pb blaster i definatly the key.

LT1 > LS1

the bolts I had trouble with were the manifold-to-ypipe bolts.

the factory 3 bolt flanges were stuck together, so I ended up getting a sawzall and choppin the y-pipe out, so when I dropped down my manifolds they looked kinda like shorty headers lol, since part of the ypipe was still on


oh, heres a guide that I used it helped a bunch.

http://zmydust.com/tech.html

tells you how to remove the air pump too.