I know.. it was just a quick grab and I figured that most of the free flowing designs wouldn't fit anyways. Don't get me wrong here.. those things are still horrible by my standards too. I just wouldn't go out of my way to run any stock manifold.. ported or not.. if I had the option to stuff that factory tube style junk in its place to get another leg up in the power department. Hookers, headmans, and all the others are cheap enough and can even be found used by the dozens. Slightly lessor of two evils when you're on a strict budget.. kinda thing.
I think the biggest complaint about headers is leaks at the head/flange, If those who think that's a problem, then simply investing in quality gaskets (copper) will fix that problem permanently. I recently did a GT40 head swap on my 96 E150 van, replaced the iron manifolds (the passenger side was leaking at the head/flange junction, sound familiar?) with a set of coated Pacesetter shorty's, gaskets are Summit's hose brand copper. After 7000 miles none of the bolts have loosened, no leaks anywhere. They're good for the life remaining in the van. Every bit as reliable (more so in this case) as the iron manifolds were (which were leaking after 96,000 miles. Cause of the leaking manifold was snow and ice getting packed into the manifolds, then melting releasing the road salt to attack the iron at the joint.
I hear that! I don't know how many times I've seen people sell cars with cracked or warped manifolds for dirt cheap after being lead to believe the engine was bad. In fact.. my mothers dirtbag of an "old school friend" once bought a perfectly straight(aside from the "old lady dings") full black 67 Lincoln with suicide doors and completely half-split manifold for $700 from a widowed and retired little old lady. He really thought he was something by stealing that car from here and planned on selling it for some ridiculous sum of $5,000 after the manifold was replaced and finish detailed up "a few weeks later". This is around 84'.. so $4,000 or so was already pushing it. The car got hit and completely totaled about two weeks later when it was almost ready to list in the classified section while it was parked outside his house(another friend of his said it was rearended at an angle into the back door at over 50mph and literally bent the car). First and only thing I've ever said to that prick after that was.. "You know that was someone's mother and grandma you took advantage of, right? Which just goes to show.. what comes around.. goes around". Just imagine how many times through the years this same thing has happened.
