Hi,
Could you elaborate on how the header did not fit? Seeing that the
gracious person from Rimmer was able to make the unit fit your car, it
would be nice to know what sort of effort is involved in making it fit.
By way of example, I'll relate my experience with a Monza cheapo header
that I purchased a while back ('94 Carlisle). It was a Monza header for
the twin pipe TR6 system. When I test fitted the unit to the engine, it
bolted right up! However, when I went to install my Cannon manifold for
the DCOE40's - there was interference between the "tabs" on the manifold
and the header exhaust flange. A bit of grinding with my Makita 4" grinder
took care of that. Note: I removed metal from the header, not the intake
manifold.
I then tried to fit up the rest of the system. Low and behold! The
collector flange was weled on cockeyed and there was no way to install the
"adapter" from the collector to the twin pipes. It turns out that the
header collector was welded with an "up" angle such that it hit the frame.
And I'm not talking "close". This was way off - the adapter pipe literally
would have been inside the passenger footwell.
Well - Makita to the rescue again. This time, I judiciously ground down
the collector welds and removed the collector. I then "tacked" it in place
and re-fit. Once I got everything re-aligned properly, I had my expert
welder reweld the collector so that it won't leak. Note: this operation is
fairly difficult because you need to be really careful about "burning
through" the header material. It's very thin!
Oh - and then I tried to "port match" the header to the cylinder head. I
gave up on that one. The primary tubes of the Monza header are welded in
on the surface that mates to the cylinder head. Careful measurement showed
that there was not much metal to grind away there to get a really great
match - and there is no weld "fillet" on the backside, so if you try to
grind much metal away here, you would probably cut through the pipes, not
a good thing.
So - I spent probably 5 or 6 hours getting "fitment" and then another hour
or so welding and then another hour re-painting. And this is for a
mediocre header.
Last point - I also found that the two end tubes of the header interfere
with the "lower" stud/clamp/nut setup. They interfere so much that I was
considering denting the header to get things to fit. Seeing that I went
through all this effort to fit the header, I figured why make the thing
worse than it really is? So, I wound up using a 3/8 "cap screw" (with an
allen head) instead of the stud/nut arrangement. This winds up being
really easy to do and looks sort of "high tech"...
See why I've stated "get a good header"?
I'm glad your exercise worked out okay.
Good luck!
rml
TR6's
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