I can't for the life of me, seem to get the drivers side header into the car. from the top or bottom. I have PPC's and the passenger side was cake, but the drivers side is total hell. Also, I just did a heads/cam swap at the same time. Can i re-remove the drivers side head and drop in the header from the top and reinstall the head? I dont want to go this route but am running out of ideas. I know you shouldnt reuse a gasket, but since I just installed the head would it be ok to reuse the new gasket that was just installed?

Thanks,

Scott

 

You could do that, or you could save yourself a ton of time and headache by going under the car, loosening the motor mounts and jacking the entire engine up a few inches. A jack placed CAREFULLY under the crank pulley will do the job nicely. Takes much less time than removing a cylinder head.

 

Jeeez, it's really that bad?

Installing my QTPs was a breeze and PPCs are the same design so...

I'm gonna assume that your doing this with a jack (and not on a lift). If so, you need to get the car up as high as possible because the drivers side header needs to go in at kind of a funny angle (probably like 70-80 degrees). IOW, the collector is gonna be pointing almost straight down at the ground. You should be able to slide it up there fairly easily like that. Once you get the flange up around the head (the first couple primaries will probably be past the head), you should be able to straighten it out.

I dunno, it's hard to explain...you just need to get the car up really high, you want as much room to work with as possible. I probably had the bottom of my front tires a good 12-14 inches off the ground. To get the front up that high, you need to jack the rear up pretty high too.

BTW, I had to take the drain plug out too (it was that close) and I believe I had to take he oil filter out too (not 100% sure though). Obviously I did take the filter out to change the oil, I'm just not sure if it was in the way or not.

 

Well, I have the oil filter out and the steering linkage removed. I have my rear wheels on ramps and my friont on the highest my jack stands will go along with 2 4x4's on it. My wheels are easily 14" off the ground and I have been trying to go straight up in. I seem to hit between the oil filert housing and the underbody of the car. I will try and lift it a lil more before going the route of the motor mounts, but am really not wanting to loosen the motor mounts unless its a last resort. 96SFLZ, when you say 70-80 degrees, which way was your collector, to the front or rear of the car. I mean with the angle?

 

I just went through this (not personally), I had it done. They had to actually lift the motor to install the driver side header. I got mine too from PPC. Wait though, it gets better. I had the ORY w/o the cats and they told me about half of the clamps were sent and that the Y section was a biatch to match up to my corsa. All installed now, a bit loud but the performance is definately there. Good luck.

 

The 70-80 degrees was towards the rear, it was almost straight up but not quite.

I'm really surprised about the difficulty you're having...PPC and QTP are both Grot design headers...and I had no trouble with mine, honestly took maybe 30-60 sec. to get the drivers side in.


Good luck