Agree w/ you PiggNFord. Funny how that always is the case. There are some Gibson headers on ebay I was looking at (cheap), think I'll pass on them for now. At least until I see some other guinea pig try em first.

Soundper4mance..... you gonna try those out?? Saw you were first to bid......

 

man, I do all my mods but this one is sounding like a major pain in the @$$.
I think I'd pay to do this one, I'd have a new dent in something by the time I was done.. -wrench flying across the garage...

 

SS is like everything else. There are multiple qualities to choose from. We unfortunately only get what the manfacturer chooses. The higher quality exhaust seem to use 304. The price reflects that.

 

This is exactly one of the reasons (and lack of locking hardware) why I'm taking so long on it. I've been getting so freaking frustrated that I just give up for the day and tackle it again the next day otherwise I'd be throwing wrenches out my garage, which is where my dad's truck sits.

 

Well...



was one of my many tool creations to get them bolted in. It's a ratcheting socket wrench bolted to another wrench for distance and swivel action. The ratchet socket wrench was so extensively (by itself and with other tools) used it's a MUST to do this easily.

Both sides are fully bolted to the block, now waiting on longer Stage8 locking retainers -- was on phone with both JBA and Stage8 getting the right sized retainers sent to me. At least the exhaust system will be fully lock bolted...no retightening, ever Turns out of most of the lengthiness of the install was due to lack of a huge workspace, single worker (me), and the tight fit (especially on passenger side) of everything, including the JBA headers and that combined with the fact I HAD to use locking bolts on every single bolt made it a super pain in the butt because some bolts HAVE to go in before others or you can't get it in and sometimes have to restart over. lol.

I have updated pics in my gallery for now...unfortunately still too much stuff out of place to fire it up so I just have to wait until Monday evening I guess. The wait is going to kill me after all this time installing...lol, oh well, relax time i guess.

 

what are those stage8 bolts? I've never heard of them.

 

www.stage8.com, they're so nice especially for this.

 

Truck will be started and driveable tonight once I get a friend to help me put the front diff back in place and rebolted in!

 

Ok, so how about tonight then. Had quite an exhaust leak on the drivers side...it required tightening it under heat soak -- good thing for good mechanix gloves! Leak has been fixed and I'll be driving it tonight! Write-up this weekend for those of you really interested. Exhaust note at idle sounds about the same, little more "blurblery" but not much different -- I'm guessing it will be under load though.

 

I HATE the Stage 8 locking bolts! I had them on my Cobra and they seemed to be more trouble than they were worth. I put some sort of thread sealer (removable loc-tite) and havent had a problem in 8 years. My Cobra had more hiding places for a dropped clip to hide and i am SURE the f150 does too. It will be interesting to see how much the headers help your truck.

 

Yep, I had a few "fall" into oblivion...but there was only one place for them to fall into on both sides, and that's the tube jetting out from the frame rail upon which the motor is mounted and is fairly accessible from both sides. Until I found where they were falling to, I was like "WTF"...I even dropped a wrench on purpose to see where they went. LOL.

 

i have a good telescoping magnet for just these purposes! I wonder if i have more room to do this on my 2wd... I need to go look

 

Another trip to sears this morning to buy some new/special wrenches. I have some exhaust leaks while driving from at least the drivers side and most of the bolts are VERY tight...I have this weird inclination of a feeling that the header isn't sealing up to the block as well as it's supposed to. I am giving myself until Monday morning to fix it myself, then I'll be paying someone. I've never given up on an install ever, but this one is testing me to my limits. As a side note, the exhaust (even over the leaks) sounds great, and the FEELING of the headers is quite noticable and very nice, especially upon start -- you KNOW you have a 5.4 V8 in there for sure

 

chasing down leaks is where the stage 8 stuff sucks!! If you had an earlier leak, you might have burned through the gasket. You might want to check that out. Good luck on it though!!

 

Yeah. If at this point after using a new wrench on it (and did tighten the header bolts more) the headers leak under load I probably did burn through a gasket, however at idle (no one currently around to help) the header is not leaking at all and is tight. The collector however is leaking like crazy, and that's partially because I need to use washers on the stage8 collector bolts. I started tightening them more today and noticed the head was receding into the header collector flange instead of tightening up the exhaust There's a good chance that's where all my leak is coming from while driving...that would make me very pleased.

I've learned with the Stage8 stuff and headers after this install is to NOT put the locking hardware onto the bolt until you're absolutely positively sure you want to lock it up. "Lock it up, no you lock it up, YOU LOCK IT UP" - Wedding Crashers.