timmbo

As I was about to install my polyurethane motor mounts I was giving the local areas a good look and noticed a big brown/black vapor exhaust stain on the block from my driver side header on cyl 8. I knew I started hearing something lately on cold starts like a ticking or very faint "pist-pist" noise until it warmed up. Well I decided to pull the headers to investigate further. Well, most definitely the gasket area on cyl 8 is toast and the front cyl 5 was just starting to leak but hadn't quite escaped the edge of the gasket like cyl 8. The passenger side header gasket had zero issues. Next step was to take a nice steel straight edge I have and run it across the header flange to check for warpage. Sure enough the driver side header flange was warped. Not extreme, but enough to cause the gasket to blow out over time. Sent the headers yesterday to Blue Ribbon Machine in Nashville to get milled and planed. Picked them up today and they are perfect. And I mean dead flat perfect 65 bucks later. Got a set of new Percys Seal 4 Good gaskets as well to ensure I'm not pulling headers for this crap again.

My bitch is that I'm going to assume that Pypes doesn't mill their flanges after welding or doesn't check them for trueness. Most anything warps after welding. Even if its in a jig. Especially headers. I know I sure didn't overtorque the bolts. Doing some research I found a couple other people with Pypes headers and the same issue. My fault I guess since I didn't check them for true before I installed them. Lesson learned. The headers have been on for a year and about 4k miles.