oilwell1415
Well-known member
Finally got my long tube heaers and exhaust installed. I've only been able to hear it for about 10 seconds so far, but it sounds great. I was hoping to get to the track today and see what it did for me. The weather was great (BP~30.7, temp~15, low humidity) other than the 6" of fresh snow we got this morning. I have a few helpful hints for those of you that will do the install yourself, and also some constructive criticism of the kit. I'm sure there are more tips that someone can provide, and I'm sure I don't remember everything since I finished the install at 3am. Here goes:
1. No instructions are provided. Granted, an exhaust install isn't very difficult, but learning all the little nuances of getting everything on takes a ton of time. For $1700 I think customers deserve a set of instructions. It would have cut my install time in half if I had known starting the project what I know now. The JDM web site I believe list installation time (I believe) as 2.5-3 hours. It took me and my lovely assistant 9 hours to do it and I'm no slug with a wrench. We did take a few minutes here and there for pictures, but that probably didn't ammount to more than an hour total.
2. The upstream O2 bungs point the O2's right into the heat shields. You must either cut the shields or remove them for the O2's to fit. I used a 1.5" hole saw to make holes for the sensors. I suggest setting the headers in place, marking where the modifications are needed, them moving the headers around to make the cuts. I did it with the headers already bolted in and it was fairly difficult. It appears on my truck that the O2's would have fit fine if the bungs pointed straight up instead of to the side, but this could vary from year to year and even truck to truck.
3. The third stud from the front on the bottom row on the passenger needs to be cut down or replaced with a bolt. I didn't find this out until the header was in place, and after that fight I wasn't going to take it back out to replace it. The stud actually touched the header tube slightly on my truck, which made it impossible to get a 12 point box end wrench (the only thing I could think of that would work) to fit. I cut the stud off about 1/4" with a hack saw blade and then everything was fine. Yes, the stud was threaded in all the way.
4. No hardware is included to mount the cats to the header collectors. It's only about $2 worth of hardware, but in the middle of the night it isn't easy to find the stuff. The kit is otherwise so complete it seems silly not to include this hardware. Luckily, I found some 3/8 hardware in a shop drawer that did the job.
5. The outlet tube on the driver's side cat hit the heat shield. This was no biggy, but it looked like the component could be built slightly differently to eliminate the need for modification.
6. The wiring on the downstream O2 for the passenger side was about 1/2" too short to reach the new bung. There is some extra wire that can be rearranged to make it reach if you unclip the connector from the top of the transmission.
7. The tailpipes that go into the muffler were about 1/4" too narrow to fit into the muffler outlets. I had to rebend them to get them to fit. This would be a project killer if I didn't have the equipment needed to spread the pipes apart for proper fit.
8. Take all the studs out of the driver's side head before installing the header. We tried with the studs in and couldn't get it on. We could have saved time if we had known this from the start. The upper row of studs must be removed on the passenger side.
Please don't take this post as a flame, I love the kit. I was cussing like hell last night, but I'm over it. The quality of the headers is phenomenal, among the top two or three I have seen. I also commend the quality gaskets included with the kit. Most headers come with cheesy 50 cent parts store gaskets, but this kit came with actual Ford header gaskets and high quality composite collector gaskets. Ordinarily I would expect these to fail in short order, but all the flanges are ground flat to prevent the gaskets from being cut through, a benefit of this system.
Overall, I give the kit two thumbs up. I just thought I would post this here in the hopes of helping the other DIY'ers out there and make a few recommendations. If anyone has any questions, feel free to email me and I'll try to help out as best I can.
1. No instructions are provided. Granted, an exhaust install isn't very difficult, but learning all the little nuances of getting everything on takes a ton of time. For $1700 I think customers deserve a set of instructions. It would have cut my install time in half if I had known starting the project what I know now. The JDM web site I believe list installation time (I believe) as 2.5-3 hours. It took me and my lovely assistant 9 hours to do it and I'm no slug with a wrench. We did take a few minutes here and there for pictures, but that probably didn't ammount to more than an hour total.
2. The upstream O2 bungs point the O2's right into the heat shields. You must either cut the shields or remove them for the O2's to fit. I used a 1.5" hole saw to make holes for the sensors. I suggest setting the headers in place, marking where the modifications are needed, them moving the headers around to make the cuts. I did it with the headers already bolted in and it was fairly difficult. It appears on my truck that the O2's would have fit fine if the bungs pointed straight up instead of to the side, but this could vary from year to year and even truck to truck.
3. The third stud from the front on the bottom row on the passenger needs to be cut down or replaced with a bolt. I didn't find this out until the header was in place, and after that fight I wasn't going to take it back out to replace it. The stud actually touched the header tube slightly on my truck, which made it impossible to get a 12 point box end wrench (the only thing I could think of that would work) to fit. I cut the stud off about 1/4" with a hack saw blade and then everything was fine. Yes, the stud was threaded in all the way.
4. No hardware is included to mount the cats to the header collectors. It's only about $2 worth of hardware, but in the middle of the night it isn't easy to find the stuff. The kit is otherwise so complete it seems silly not to include this hardware. Luckily, I found some 3/8 hardware in a shop drawer that did the job.
5. The outlet tube on the driver's side cat hit the heat shield. This was no biggy, but it looked like the component could be built slightly differently to eliminate the need for modification.
6. The wiring on the downstream O2 for the passenger side was about 1/2" too short to reach the new bung. There is some extra wire that can be rearranged to make it reach if you unclip the connector from the top of the transmission.
7. The tailpipes that go into the muffler were about 1/4" too narrow to fit into the muffler outlets. I had to rebend them to get them to fit. This would be a project killer if I didn't have the equipment needed to spread the pipes apart for proper fit.
8. Take all the studs out of the driver's side head before installing the header. We tried with the studs in and couldn't get it on. We could have saved time if we had known this from the start. The upper row of studs must be removed on the passenger side.
Please don't take this post as a flame, I love the kit. I was cussing like hell last night, but I'm over it. The quality of the headers is phenomenal, among the top two or three I have seen. I also commend the quality gaskets included with the kit. Most headers come with cheesy 50 cent parts store gaskets, but this kit came with actual Ford header gaskets and high quality composite collector gaskets. Ordinarily I would expect these to fail in short order, but all the flanges are ground flat to prevent the gaskets from being cut through, a benefit of this system.
Overall, I give the kit two thumbs up. I just thought I would post this here in the hopes of helping the other DIY'ers out there and make a few recommendations. If anyone has any questions, feel free to email me and I'll try to help out as best I can.
