![\"1_inair\"](\"http:\/\/www.rhoadescamaro.com\/build\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/1_inair.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n2: remove factory strut bar.\u00a0 You don’t have to remove all the panels at rear, just the middle portion.\u00a0 Nuts and bolts are 14mm<\/p>\n
Step 3: View of the driver’s side heat shield.\u00a0 Held in with 4x 10mm bolts.\u00a0 Got to all of them from above.<\/p>\n 4: View of the passenger heat shield.\u00a0 Same thing, 4x10mm bolts accessed from above.\u00a0 Both heat shields come out up\/forward.<\/p>\n 5: Time to get underneath the car.\u00a0 There are about 8,000 10mm\/phillips bolts holding in the undertray, with three of the push-snaps in the middle.\u00a0 Easiest to remove all the bolts and the snaps last so it isn’t hitting you in the face half the time.<\/p>\n Better be still smiling here, if not you better turn back!<\/p>\n 6: Before shot of the cats.\u00a0 Car already has Berk HFC on it, but the stock would look similar here.<\/p>\n 7: Passenger cat “before”.\u00a0 Cat removal\/replacement is covered in HFC install DIY articles.\u00a0 Some people have removed the OE headers keeping the cats attached, and I suppose you could.\u00a0 The Berks came back off pretty easily.<\/p>\n 8:\u00a0 Driver’s side “before”.\u00a0 Little bit busier in there \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n 9: Passenger cat out.\u00a0 With the HFC you can get to all three fasteners from underneath which is nice, no crazy 3′ snake of extenders like you have to do when removing the OE cats.<\/p>\n 10: Driver’s side out.\u00a0 Only a little tougher than passenger.<\/p>\n The above took me about 2 hours, that was evening 1.<\/p>\n Evening 2 begin:<\/p>\n 11: View of the passenger header before removal.\u00a0 Both sides are held in with 6 nuts on studs.\u00a0 The studs are diagonally opposed across each cylinder’s exhaust port.<\/p>\n 12: View of the driver’s side header.\u00a0 Also in view are a big coolant tube (shiny metal), clump of electrical (black plastic), and A\/C lines (black and silver at bottom).\u00a0 For this project you spend a lot of time trying to squeeze in between those things – it pays to have small forearms here.\u00a0 In addition to the squeeze there are some sharp parts which will slice you up.<\/p>\n 13:\u00a0 To remove all 12 nuts (14mm), I used a deep 6-point 1\/2″ drive socket on a swivel-head ratcheting breaker bar thing.\u00a0 Been working on cars a long time and only bought it recently for some other project, glad I had it here.<\/p>\n 14:\u00a0 Before you can pull the headers you need to disconnect the o2 sensors.\u00a0 I thought it’d be easier to unbolt the sensors after the manifolds were removed to I unplugged the sensors up top and undid them from their little guide brackets on the back of the block.\u00a0 The passenger side, it’s buried back in there.<\/p>\n 15:\u00a0 Passenger side stock manifold out!\u00a0 yay!<\/p>\n 16: View of the passenger cylinder head with the manifold removed.\u00a0 Unlike the black hole of the driver side, light can travel into this space to illuminate its shape \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n 17: The driver’s side o2 sensor plug is harder to get to (a consistent theme).\u00a0 It helped to unplug the connector going to the throttle body.<\/p>\n 18: Driver side o2 sensor slid off its little post and unplugged<\/p>\n 19: Driver side – out!\u00a0 Got it out without having to remove the studs, or mess with the steering.<\/p>\n 20: Is there a manifold in there still?\u00a0 Eh, can’t tell…<\/p>\n 21: The factory manifolds are actually really nice looking for an OE piece.\u00a0 Some guy in Japan (or wherever they are designed) probably shakes his head when he sees people swapping headers.<\/p>\n Header primary diameter is a big factor in the shape of an engine’s power curve.\u00a0 Stock pieces are about 1.5″ – which in a super overgeneralized hand-wave, is a little “torquey\/small” for an engine making 50-60 whp per cylinder.<\/p>\n 22: Collector size is appropriate for the primaries but a little choked overall.<\/p>\n Evening 2 ends here, another 2 hours.<\/p>\n Evening 3 begin – this was the long one:<\/p>\n 23: Unboxing the PPE’s<\/p>\n 24: First to attempt install was the passenger side.\u00a0 I recommend doing that with everything because it’s a massively more accessible mirror image of the driver’s side. What you learn here without a ton of pain, you can apply to the other side.<\/p>\n It wouldn’t go in and something seemed really wrong here. This was one of my first heart attack moments. Check out the flange compared to stock:<\/p>\n For a while I was surveying the shipping materials to be sure I could send them back. The flange seemed upside down, but then I saw the front (left-most in pic) cylinder was correct.\u00a0 Took me a while to figure out, the gasket had holes in the right places, but also the cylinder head had the holes already tapped in the perfect spots?!?<\/p>\n So I swapped the diagonal positioning of the rear ones – it still wouldn’t go in,\u00a0 but now because of a lack of room.<\/p>\n Left the middle cylinder’s studs in (original holes) and got the header on, and re-installed the other studs.\u00a0 A ways into securing things I realized the middle would have to be swapped too..<\/p>\n Eventually got it in, studs in (they have a 6-point star end that needs a 1\/4″ wrench or socket – 6mm too small, 7mm too big) and nuts tightened.<\/p>\n 25: Passenger side header in.\u00a0 Three top nuts and forward lower tightened from above.\u00a0 Middle and rear lower tightened from below with wrenches.<\/p>\n 26: Starting point for driver’s side install.\u00a0 Lots in the way. Had to raise the front of the car a bunch more to allow it to be angled past the clutch parts.\u00a0 The steering shaft MUST be disconnected and slid way up inside the column. To do that, remove the red-headed 12mm bolt, and remove the white plastic clip thing on the shaft.\u00a0 The splined end of the column is keyed to the receiving end on the rack.\u00a0 The problem is once you slide the shaft up past where the white plastic piece is, it becomes unkeyed internally up in the steering mechanism.\u00a0 Take care to not alter the relative clocking of these components!<\/p>\n 27: The lessons from the passenger side helped but getting this far is awful.\u00a0 To get the very tip of your fingertips holding the exhaust studs to the place they need to be, requires sacrificing your forearm in the jaws of the surrounding tubes and things.\u00a0 It’s extra painful because as you are moving your fingers, it makes the forearm area hurt more, as your finger’s tendors try to move while clamped in a vice.<\/p>\n 28: The three top nuts aren’t too bad, same for lower front.\u00a0 The rearmost lower is accessible with a wrench from underneath (again way harder than passenger side) but the middle lower nut…well, all I could picture in my head is IMPOSSIBRU <\/a><\/p>\n That is the single toughest fastener to deal with in this whole project.<\/p>\n This is a view from directly underneath, an unobstructed column way too narrow to allow for any tool angularity.\u00a0 Making it worse, I was too lazy\/dumb to bring the front of the car lower again after raising in step 26.\u00a0 That meant doing anything from underneath meant holding an abdominal crunch to get the arms\/shoulders high enough to reach stuff.\u00a0 I’m a typically beer bellied american so I called it a night at this point so I could look at it fresh the next day – was past 2am, a 5 hour work session.<\/p>\n Evening 3 (Friday night) done, evening 4 begin.<\/p>\n 29: Contemplating the problem, I thought I’d get some swivel-head wrenches, on the hopes I could find some plane that would allow me to tighten it.\u00a0 Because of the V shape of the motor, tools want to fall off if not held in place.\u00a0 But there’s not much in the way of access to hold in place, not to mention allow for any installation motion.<\/p>\n The other problem was the nut was close enough to the primary tube, not enough room to fit the closed end of a ratcheting wrench (at least my mediocre-quality gearwrench stuff) on it.<\/p>\n What I ended up stumbling into, was to use the open end of the swivel-head wrench like so:<\/p>\n This shortened the effective length of the wrench enough that I could move it 1 “flat” (1\/6th of a turn) at a time within the space available. At the same time, the flex head being in that perpendicular plane allowed me to both hold it onto the fastener, but also torque it, with one hand.<\/p>\n After a few complete revolutions I had to keep stopping every 4-5 flats to let the blood flow back into my arm.\u00a0 Access was from above the lower control arm and up through the maze of tubes. But at last, the hard mechanical part was done.<\/p>\n 30: An unprepped o2 sensor extension<\/p>\n 31: Ends stripped and crimped<\/p>\n 32: I extended up near the factory plug to keep the nice factory head shielding in place down at the header end.<\/p>\n 33: Some people have had trouble with this.\u00a0 There are 2 black wires, 1 blue, 1 white.\u00a0 I recommend cutting 1 black wire, crimping on one side, then checking continuity to ensure you’re attaching the correct end on the other side.\u00a0 Once that’s done, you can cut the other 3 (since there’s now 1 of each color).<\/p>\n 34: One of my forward o2 sensors boogered its threads upon removal from the factory manifold, even though I treated it nicely on the bench.\u00a0 It wouldn’t thread into the PPE header, and it was midnight on a Saturday night – exhaust shop and dyno appt Monday, leaving for big race Wednesday, no time to wait for a new one, and I don’t have a tap\/die tool in that size.\u00a0 What to do?<\/p>\n What I did was use the other factory manifold where the sensor had come out cleanly.\u00a0 Lubed it up a little and with some finesse, was able to use it to repair the o2 sensor’s threads enough to get it to tighten and seal nicely in the new header.\u00a0 Heart attack #2 averted!<\/p>\n 35: Passenger side installed and wired up.<\/p>\n 36: Driver’s side installed and wired up.\u00a0 The o2 sensor wires on both sides need some help getting secured in a way that keeps them from getting melted.\u00a0 This wasn’t too hard but at this point I discovered the transmission (which is right there and you’ll contact at this step) has some weird casting bumps that are extremely painful to touch, much less rub against.\u00a0 It feels like 20 grit sandpaper that also delivers an electric shock!<\/p>\n 38: Driver’s side you can’t see it all, despite all the suffering!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\n37: From above, you can barely see the header in place once the intake is reinstalled.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n