Me and a friend put long tube headers on our cars at the same time he has the ls1 and i have the lt1. His car started rolling black smoke so he took it to the shop and they said that he had bent valves and the reason is because he does not have catlalic convertors. Is this true will this cause valves to warp on ls1 and lt1 or have the mechanics lost their minds. Thanks guys

 

It's not true. He may have fouled the O2 sensors or developed some other problem. Did they do a compression check? Does it crank unevenly?

 

Running without cats will NOT bend your valves

I have been running without them forever and my car runs great. Most people that race their cars don't use cats (or have them gutted).

 

I would check all your connections, make sure everything is hooked up and hooked up right. The only way i could think of a valve being bent because of this swap is if you/him by mistake droped something in one of the exhaust ports while the manifold was off.

I just installed LTs in my LT1 and I almost droped a header bolt right in one of the exhaust ports while just checking to make sure the bolt (stage 8) would thread in correctly while the manifold was off. It went right into the port and teetered on the edge of falling in....it was an awe crap moment for sure. Good luck.

 

Meh, nothing a snaking magnet couldn't retrieve.

 

He is getting a compression check done asap. I told him that it wasnt true but wanted to check with you all. Thanks again.

 

sounds like u need a new mechanic

 

True, after i got the bolt out of the port i felt around and it wouldn't have fell very far before it would sit on the valve. The thing is though when the bolt left my hand I thought it hit the floor, I was looking on the k-member and ground before taking another look and seeing it in the port.

If it had fell all the way in I would have never guessed it was there and would have just used another bolt and finish the job. I would have been surprised when i started it up! Its just things like this that make me think of how bad a small project like headers could turn out.