Found some really nice stainless long tube headers for my truck. I ordered them today but over looked something and now I don't think they will work. I talked to the guy for a long time to make sure they will fit my 84 C10 and he assured me they will but we never talked about this... the heads on my swapped 383 have square ports and the headers are round port 1 5/8" primaries w/ 3" collector. They shipped out today and now it looks like I can't use them.. or can I? Probably not. After looking online, all of the headers for my truck that I have seen so far have round ports. Are the stock heads round port or something? Is there such thing as square port headers made specifically for my truck?

 

what kind of 383? GenI/GenII/GenIII, GM Heads? partnumber on the heads? Headers on my dune buggy are hooker long tubes and they take on a sort of oval port from the primary, but on the 882 heads it's an oval type port, i'll post pix if I can find em...

editing: found some pix of the headers on the motor.
hope the pictures help you kinda. the link is to a video with the motor in it.
and on the model number of the heads I'm pretty positive they're 882 it's written down here somewhere, anyways I hope I helped some.

http://s88455272.onlinehome.us/buggy.wmv

 

If your engine and headers are both GENII design, they should work. As long as the port on the head is completely sealed off by the header, you will be fine. Match the header gaskets up to the head and check it out. I personally haven't seen any square port headers, but I haven't had the need to research that.

 

it's a gen I. came out of a nova. 350 block 400 crank. old school camel hump heads (double hump) square port. is there a way to machine the round ports on the header flange to match the square ports on the head?

 

very nice. now i know what mine will look like with polished headers and chrome valve covers



here's the headers...

 

well if you wanted to take a die grinder to it, yeah. but there's really no point unless you're really hardcore into maximum flow.

did you get those headers off ebay? I saw some on there from a guy I bought my rebuild kit from. he had em for 250 bux or something for stainless headers. I thought bull , but they might be aight.
and btw, the headers look like crap now on the dune buggy because the paint I got was only rated to 400* instead of 650 .

the pic of the headers you posted look like they're really polished chrome or ceramic coated. stick a magnet next to it and see if it sticks. if it does they're not stainless.

 

yea i would want to match the port size for maximum flow. i don't see how not doing this would benefit a whole lot. plus it doesn't seem like it would seal up right. sounds like i can take a square port gasket and mark the lines on the flange and use a die grinder to shape the port without getting into the welds. would this be the best tool to use?

 

well it depends on how off the ports are, but yes a nice carbide bit on a die grinder would work splendid. If the ports are off by like 1/10" I wouldn't grind it all the way. Make sure you don't cheap out on the bit b/c on stainless it'll go out quick. If you can heli-arc, just TIG up the gap between the primaries and the flange and then grind all you want

 

I consider this pretty way off as far as the header port on the flange being way smaller than the square ports on the heads. I layed a square port gasket on the header flange. In this pic the red indicates the square port and the yellow indicates the round port on the flange. Is it worth the trouble of port matching or will it not be that bad? I don't think there's enough metal there to accurately port match the flange without getting into the welds.

 

hmmm... that's pretty interesting. You could bevel out the tubing to where it sweeps into the square port. get what im sayin? Also, the Fel-Pro gaskets are pretty sweet and they're a round port gasket. I personally hate Mr.Gasket stuff since the first manifold gaskets for the dune buggy went to **** after a week. that's just my 2 cents on Mr.Gasket. Making a bevel on the flange would work quite nice as long as the bevel is uniform and doesn't have any planar faces (flat faces).