wow thats awesome thanks for the post, i should be getting them by either today or tomorrow. the guy on the phone told me that the headers arent really discontinued, they just arent pumping out a ton of them and keeping a bunch of inventory, and that they still have their jig for building them, so if a customer wants a pair then they will make them. the guys told me that they arent a true bolt in deal i have to cut the y pipe right in front of the cats and have their flange welded on.

 

got the headers today and i must say they look great! cant wait to get them installed, im probably gonna tackle that tomorrow im sure it will take most of the day.

 

call if u get stuck and new help, ya have the number. ive done 3 sets of LTs now so im gettin the hang of it pretty damn good

 

you and hi-may and derek should come over and have some beers, keep me company and such...

 

Word. ill deff hit u up in the morning.. er when i wake up lol

 

Man, you got those fast, cool deal Sounds like you'll be runnin them by the weekend

 

yeah im hoping to have them on today. im thinkin im gonna have to use a clamp on it to get to the muffler shop to have them weld it though.

i was going to pick up some of those gm studs but the headers came with a really nice set of bolts, im thinking that i might just use those. what do you think?

 

You could probably get by just driving it down to the exhaust shop. I believe that the adapters fit up close enough to the cats that I doubt you can get a clamp in there. Here is that thread by Dezert1500 that I was talking about earlier. http://www.gmfullsize.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151586 Take a look towards the end of the thread for the pics.

As for the bolts, it is up to you. I used the GM studs because I already had them ordered and I thought that they would make it a lot easier to put on the headers, turns out they were easy enough to put on that I could have used the bolts. If you have the same bolts I got then they are a black oxidized 12point metric 10.5grade bolt. As far as I can tell they are a very good quality bolt. I would not hesitate to use them, but you may want to post up some pics of them for others to decide.

I believe the main thing is to use anti-seize, lots and lots of anti-seize. GM torque spec is to tighten from center two bolts working towards the ends in two passes. First at 11 ft-lbs then again at 18 ft-lbs. Don't forget to recheck the torques in a few 100 miles. I know with my studs I have had 0 problems with them loosening, but due to their length and size it is really tricky to get a torque wrench on the back studs/nuts. Don't know how the bolts would stack up against the studs in terms of backing out, I believe the thick flanges on the Bassani headers really help out a lot in terms of keeping the torque spec correct by not warping as much as cheaper headers. If you do go with studs, remember, the studs only get tightened finger tight, just turn them in until they bottom out. You do not torque the studs, you torque the nuts, if you try tightening the studs you loose all the strength advantages that a stud is known for.

As for the gasket, I bought and used a cheap (~$15) set of Fel-Pro gaskets. They appear to be a layered metal type of material and I think they could possibly even be reusable. I saved the Bassani gaskets for later as I plan on pulling the heads and having them milled down to bump up the compression when I put in a new cam. However, you should be just fine using the Bassani gaskets. In fact, a mechanic friend of mine who works for Cat came by and looked and the Bassani gaskets and said that they were even better than the Fel-Pro ones. The Bassani gaskets are a expanded steel base coated in a graphite material ( if you look at the back of the gaskets there is a material part number written on it, I looked up the material and it is in fact an expanded steel base covered in graphite. It also has a low compressibility so you don't have to worry about it squishing down and leaving the bolts loose later on down the road) anyway after that diversion, Cat uses the same graphite coated gaskets for sealing their exhaust manifolds on the diesel engines and those manifolds get a lot hotter than any Chevy LSx engine and the gaskets hold up to the Cat heat just fine.

 

CRAP!!!

well i got the headers and they arent going to work with my y pipe, the 06's have a different y pipe than the 05 and older ones. The 06 y has the cats mounted damn near vertical just about 6 inches from the manifolds where the older y has the cats mounted lower after the bend vertically. so the only way to get them to fit would be to modify the y, but a smog shop would take one look at it and say that i modified the y and it wouldnt pass, so i guess im going to have to get a y pipe from an 05.

-well i had jaegmc99 over today and he has the stock y pipe on his truck that he got from derek which is an 05 and he is gonna swap me y pipes so that saved my butt. im hoping that everything goes well and i can get them swapped out tomorrow, but ill have to do the headers some other weekend.

im just hoping there is no difference between the 2wd and 4wd y...

 

damn, gotta love how derek has the community Y pipe, this will be its 3rd truck, haha kinda like jaimes 10 series, went from his to dereks to mine ..

guess us bakersfield guys like hand me downs lol