just curious on the difficulty meter of 1-10 how hard is it to install headers on a 96-04 GT?

 

12 and a half

 

hahah its not THAT bad..... if you're mechanically inclined at all, do it yourself. yes its a headache, but $600 is a lot of money (thats what we were quoted at least...)

if you're seriously considering swapping them out, read on. if not, don't bother. the rest gets kinda long. if you have any questions, PM me.

this all applies to LONG TUBE headers. if you're considering anything but long tubes, dont waste your money.

do this: save up about $200 extra. keep it on hand to go buy the tools you realize you need after you start it. the right size ratcheting wrench made it 100x easier, but the set cost $70. an air ratchet made it a lot faster, and that was $100-ish. not with the actual HEADER install, but with taking everything else down and putting it back up. you don't NEED those tools by any stretch...but if you're the type who works on things a lot, the tools are a good investment, and besides, this is a good excuse.

get a good friend that you trust, and do it in a weekend. you'll spend a good 15 hours doing it, unless you're pretty well setup for working on cars. we actually spent quite a bit more than that. but a lot of our time really shouldn't count. we talk a lot, and it was only about 40 degrees out.

if you decide to go through with it, take this advice: buy a bottle of power steering fluid. enough to refill the system. you'll need it if you do it the way i'll tell you to. we used saran wrap and rubber bands around the power steering lines. there are thousands of ways to help stop you from making a mess in your garage. you'll understand when you get to that point. lift the car, and support it. dont use a jack to support it. support it very well. you'll be under it for a LONG time. try to keep the supports out of the way of working on the car. ours were behind the front wheels on the frame somewhere. getting close to the middle of the car, but you'll have to use your judgement on where is safe. we used pieces of 6x6 wood post. considering the same material holds up BUILDINGS, we were confident that it would keep us safe. we backed the wood up with jack stands. disconnect your calipers and use rope to tie them up somewhere. drop your entire K Member. that involves disconnecting power steering lines, suspension components, etc etc. it seems like a lot of work. it isn't. don't worry. don't forget....your engine bolts to the K member. so before you get that far, support your engine!!! once the K member is completely off the car, and your engine is being supported by a jack, you'll find it very beneficial (if not necessary) to lower the engine a couple inches. we did it without touching the transmission mount, and everything worked perfect. again, use a careful eye, ear, and steady hand to make sure everything is alright. it's nowhere near as bad as it seems at first. dropping the engine 2" makes everything SO much easier!!!!! (you will need to disconnect things on top of the engine to make this feasible too. just look through your engine. if you can't figure out what needs to be disconnected to make it safe, it's probably not a good idea to change headers yourself anyway, no offense). the rest is just time consuming, trying to reach every bolt. depending on the brand, it may be easy, or hard. mine were easy, my cousins were hard. you'll have to disconnect a lot of things (including the steering shaft and oil dipstick tube) just to get the headers in and out. like i said....not hard, just time consuming. getting the old header studs out for us was a B!TCH!!!!! they have some TINY hex head that was utterly worthless. nothing was rusted at ALL on this car, and yet we stripped the head on all but ONE of the studs. we wasted the money on the socket for it. big mistake. we ended up using a combination of 6" channellocks, and 10" "knipex cobra" pliers. the knipex pliers were just to break it loose. just the channellocks would've worked, but those made it easier. so dont worry about "needing" a certain kind. you can't beat channelock brand though....so for the $10, it might be a good investment. i dont' care what anyone says, i use channellocks almost every day, and they outlast and outgrab all other brands i've come across, with the exception of knipex pliers, at 3 times the cost. (this is why you keep an extra $200 laying around). once the studs are out, its just a matter of systematically installing the new headers. on some brands (SLP longtubes for sure) it seems impossible to reach some of the bolts. thats where dropping the K member and having the engine lowered 2" starts working for you. the instructions in our SLP kit said to raise the engine "if necessary". Hah. we didn't even try, because after about 30 minutes of consideration, we both decided that raising the engine would do NOTHING for us. we also decided that unless we had a $10,000.00 mechanics set of tools, it was impossible to do without moving the motor.

there are a lot of things i left out, but if you're mechanically inclined, you'll realize them as they come. you have to do things like remove your starter, etc. none of it is a big deal. just very time consuming.

we used a lot of ziplock bags with post it notes to keep our parts seperated. when it was all said and done, our system made sure we knew what every nut and bolt went to. not NECESSARY, but it sure made things easier.

don't be afraid of installing your headers, as long as you're not a total stranger to working on a car. looking back on it, i wish i would've done a write-up about header installations with pictures. it really wasn't that HARD, and i think a lot of people are spending a lot of money on labor that they didnt need to spend. that, or they're avoiding headers all together. it's a good experience.

 

long tubes, or don't do it at all, they're both a pain in the *** and long tubes are a bigger PITA, but they have shown 25+ rwhp gains, shorties MIGHT show 10 rwhp.....MIGHT, but highly unlikely