So, for those of you that were waiting/wondering, I sent my ARH headers out to Jet-Hot for coating. Got them back on Monday and attempted to install today. WoW... is all I can say..! 20 bolts I said to myself, this will be simple. All the heat shield and manifold bolts came out no problem. All o2 sensors, cake. Passenger side manifold to Y-pipe connection, no problem. Got to driver side, and all 3 flange nuts totally screwed me. Broke 2 sockets and a swivel, rounded 2 of the 3 nuts. Then broke a stud from y-pipe to cat back. 7+ hours later got evrything loose and driver side manifold off. Quit at this point as I was getting more & more frustrated. Tomorrow I drop transmission cross member and remove stock y-pipe and continue.

 

Sorry to hear that been down that road before, I ended up cuttin all the old **** off made life way easier!

 

How many miles on your truck?

 

Got pics of said headers?

 

Man that sucks there even worse on 4x4 trucks as the bolts on the driver side manifold to y pipe flange are even harder to get to with the front diff mount in the way. I end up just cutting all the stock stuff off.

 

I soaked all mine with PB Blaster over night then sprayed them again a few hrs before tear down... Truck is 10 yrs old. Exhaust has never been off and the nuts and studs had no problem coming off. I gave each stud a good whack with a bald-peen hammer at the ends and they came right off...

 

I know the feeling I had 3 troublesome bolts that refused to come out. 2 of the 3 backed out ok. The last was a total PIA worst location (closest to firewall on drivers side).

But we got them out. The Dynatech headers are in. In spite of the challenges it was well worth the effort. I am now going to continue by upgrading the exhaust as well.

 

You've got to spray those down with penetrating oil or heat the nuts with a torch. Snap-on makes a 15mm swivel 1/2" drive that they specifically for these. It works!

 

Sprayed mine down, over SEVERAL days, I even heated them up, and let them cool...still snapped two off. At the end of the day, any modding can result in damage. Gotta go in with that in mind. My truck had 70k miles on it. The next weekend we did a swap on a truck with double the mileage and he broke ZERO bolts.

 

headers can be a pain in the ***, that was probably my first real mod back in the day. i just cut all the old off and installed the new. took me about 6 hours by myself.

only snapped one bolt off, and rounded another. getting the dipstick tube out of the oil pain was the hardest part.