tti header clearance problem

-
I had the same problem with hthe steering hitting the headers at the castle nut, and also rubbing on the deep pan that I installed. When I went to get cutouts installed at a muffler shop, the guy there said that my pitman arm was probably weak, and he had seen that many time. Changed it out and sure enough, her was right. Gave me just enough room to clear....
 
hi all. as far as parts, everything on this car is new, tie rods, idler arm, pitman arm, steering box was rebuilt, all new mounts motor, trans. , new conversion kit to front disc, which gives you new upper arms, spindle, all new bushings, rebuilt upgraded lower arms added a/m swaybar.shocks, after the last tweek I think just to get a little more clearance I will dimple that tube, I am not sure what a good gap should be but I think it is still on the tight side.
 
Ditto on the truck mount. Used it on mine, works great. Cheep fix and no damage to header coating!
 
I had the same problem, just used a piece of 1" round tube and a hammer, pretty easy fix
 
Those are really nice, expen$ive headers. For what they cost, they should have been bent right. It's not like there's not enough room there to put a small ben to make sure it does not happen on any car, but they didn't do it. This right here is why I will never again recommend or use high dollar headers on anything Mopar. Either the Summit headers or the Headman shorties. Screw beatin on 800 dollar headers.
 
RustyRatRod said:
Those are really nice, expen$ive headers. For what they cost, they should have been bent right. It's not like there's not enough room there to put a small ben to make sure it does not happen on any car, but they didn't do it. This right here is why I will never again recommend or use high dollar headers on anything Mopar. Either the Summit headers or the Headman shorties. Screw beatin on 800 dollar headers.
Click to expand...

Reality is probably that these cars are so badly put togheter in the first place that there is no way to make a header fit them all nomather how good precision the headermanufacturer has. not saying there is never faulty headers from the manufacturer but these cars are just that far of already from the factory that they are hopeless.
 
I had to do all that too: move engine/trans, shim, shim some more ,shorten stud, clearance grind the castle nut, dimple the pipe and finally switched to 73up draglink.The dimple in the nickle plate has not rusted though in 15 yrs. However after 5 yrs the collectors developed multiple rust-throughs on top where the pipes enter. I was not impressed. They were $495 CAN at the time. I could have bought 5 cheapies. But TTIs were above the centerlink which was what I needed for my driving style,at that time. I have, since then,settled down, some. After repairing them, they lasted a few more years. They have been leaking at the collectors for at least 4 years now. I have been too lazy to weld them up again. The car is no longer my DD.
 
What about shimming the engine back a bit? Any room to work there?
 
1Fast340 said:
Reality is probably that these cars are so badly put togheter in the first place that there is no way to make a header fit them all nomather how good precision the headermanufacturer has. not saying there is never faulty headers from the manufacturer but these cars are just that far of already from the factory that they are hopeless.
Click to expand...

I don't buy that. You can buy the cheapest POS headers for any Camaro from 67-82 and they will almost fall in and not hit a damn thing. Granted, there are no torsion bars, but if companies spent as much time on Mopar header R&D as they do everything else, we'd have headers that fit right, every time.

Look at the space by which these headers the OP is talking about won't fit. Less than 3/8". Are you kiddin me? There's plenty of room galore to make that problem spot fit with in any of these cars as long as it's not been wrecked and not straightened properly.

Shim the engine mounts? My big old butt. I've built and help build hundreds of Chevys with people and for people through the years and never had one single problem where headers were concerned. Not one. Never ever had to shim anything, even with worn out sagging motor mounts. Even with big blocks in Novas with 2" plus primary pipes.

It's ridiculous that a header priced in the stratosphere does not fit them all from A to Z with no trouble. People custom build their own headers for Mopars all the time that fit great. Header companies can, but won't. All because they cannot sell a bajillion of them like they can with Chevy and Ford. PERIOD.

Mopar has always gotten the short end of the stick. They always will. As long as yall keep buying overpriced, under made crap, that's what will keep being made.
 
Dave; IIRC the OP already went as far back as he could. I guess a guy could slot out all the bolt holes(4). Thats an all-day job with engine and trans coming out. I choose the easy way out by dimpling.
 
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. Mine fit w/no shimming, no dimpling. 69 Dart, 360, 73 k frame w/spool mounts. I did have an issue w/the z-bar clearance when I did the 4 speed swap but needed a few tweaks of the arm for clearance. All of the suspension parts were also new.
 
With all due respect, you gotta put things in perspective. The vast majority of certain brand headers fit very well. The occasional ones that have a fitment problem get the most publicity. It's easier to make a header with consistent tolerances than it was to make a 40-50 year old car that has a lot of assembled and moving parts which now have been changed, used and abused over all of those years. Which is most likely to vary from original production tolerances when the two are brought together?

On the other hand, there may be some more compromises available in designing the fitment to compensate for possible differences between vehicles - moving a pipe a little bit this way or that way, yet still fit all of the vehicles a header is designed for. But I'm no engineer, wasn't there and don't know if all the possibilities were covered that they were aware of at that time. But there are a lot of "points" that have to be considered and predicted. Wear, fatigue, accidents and other replacement part tolerances (mounts, idler/pitman arms, etc.) can't always be predited.

Unfortunately, changing one of those "points" may involve a significant redesign of the header once an occasionally recurring problem surfaces. Changing one 'point" can also result in another problem "point" surfacing in the future. So cost for the manufacturer becomes a factor as well.
 
RustyRatRod said:
I don't buy that. You can buy the cheapest POS headers for any Camaro from 67-82 and they will almost fall in and not hit a damn thing. Granted, there are no torsion bars, but if companies spent as much time on Mopar header R&D as they do everything else, we'd have headers that fit right, every time.

Look at the space by which these headers the OP is talking about won't fit. Less than 3/8". Are you kiddin me? There's plenty of room galore to make that problem spot fit with in any of these cars as long as it's not been wrecked and not straightened properly.

Shim the engine mounts? My big old butt. I've built and help build hundreds of Chevys with people and for people through the years and never had one single problem where headers were concerned. Not one. Never ever had to shim anything, even with worn out sagging motor mounts. Even with big blocks in Novas with 2" plus primary pipes.

It's ridiculous that a header priced in the stratosphere does not fit them all from A to Z with no trouble. People custom build their own headers for Mopars all the time that fit great. Header companies can, but won't. All because they cannot sell a bajillion of them like they can with Chevy and Ford. PERIOD.

Mopar has always gotten the short end of the stick. They always will. As long as yall keep buying overpriced, under made crap, that's what will keep being made.
Click to expand...


You are wrong.
First of abody mopars are among the tigthest cars to build headers for you will find and screwed up factory tollerances becomes a big isue, but yes it happens that even the best headers out there are out of tollerances aswell.

On to the bullshit you are spreading about headers for chevys i worked for over 10 years in the exhaust bussines i have seen most everything under the sun have problems with headers,yes even tiny 1 5/8" tubes on a smallblock camaro that would hit things in more places than you can imagine.. i have also seen headers that would not fit a late 60´s impala with a smallblock, headers that should just fall into place.
 
Had the same issue with the tti's on my duster..simply ground down the end of the stud on the pitman arm problem solved..no denting of $600.00 headers needed:D:D
 
There are two different pitman arms. If you do not get MOOG brand parts, you will get the wrong one. I just changed my idler arm and SOOOOOOOO much better now.
 
1Fast340 said:
You are wrong.
Click to expand...

It sure as heck ain't the first time. But all of that is my opinion. So it cannot be wrong since it's mine. My opinion is with all the "bs" as you say cut out, is that if you pay upwards of 1K or more for headers, they should fit. Period. That's my opinion and I'm stickin to it. You certainly have the right to disagree.

Argue all you want, but do you really think I've not made this argument before? I am not changing my mind.
 
Rusty, Im with you.
Those TTIs had other fitment issues as well, on my 68 Barracuda 360A833. If they were $100 headers, a guy wouldnt complain. But for what they charge, a guy would think they would be engineered to fit RIGHT. Theres plenty of room in there to tweak that offending pipe into a more favorable spot. To their credit, the flanges have never leaked with the provided gaskets,nor come loose in 14 years.And thats my opinion.
BTW, I really enjoy your subtlety. No bs.
 
AJ/FormS said:
Rusty, Im with you.
Those TTIs had other fitment issues as well, on my 68 Barracuda 360A833. If they were $100 headers, a guy wouldnt complain. But for what they charge, a guy would think they would be engineered to fit RIGHT. Theres plenty of room in there to tweak that offending pipe into a more favorable spot. To their credit, the flanges have never leaked with the provided gaskets,nor come loose in 14 years.And thats my opinion.
BTW, I really enjoy your subtlety. No bs.
Click to expand...

this is interesting, I just re installed the tti`s on my 505"-68 fastback yesterday. I bought them off a guy from witchitaw(sp), I have an aftermarket front end, no torsion bars. the headers fit very good, even w/ new wrap on them, "which I hate". the wrap made them a little harder to install,but I didn`t want to spend the $ on them for coating, till I see that they`re going to hold up. I did quite a bit of dent staightening, and had a hard time getting in between 5-7 tube to weld them back together. 'SIDE NOTE" anyone trying to straighten up hammerbashed 2" headers, an 1 7/8" ball (towing) will drive thru the pieces once you cut them out to fix, may have to use a little heat tho----bob
 
Sounds like quite the adventure. ^^^^
 
RustyRatRod said:
It sure as heck ain't the first time. But all of that is my opinion. So it cannot be wrong since it's mine. My opinion is with all the "bs" as you say cut out, is that if you pay upwards of 1K or more for headers, they should fit. Period. That's my opinion and I'm stickin to it. You certainly have the right to disagree.

Argue all you want, but do you really think I've not made this argument before? I am not changing my mind.
Click to expand...

You realy need to be more openminded. these cars are junk from a presicion point of view and that goes for pretty much all brands of that era,what makes it hopeless is the fact that the Abody mopar is probably one of the tightest applications out there(togheter with early novas). I have personaly done alot of measuring in the past on some random GM cars and found them to be all over the map aswell the difference is that they have more space in the first place,and your coment about GM POS cheap headers always fitting is a load of **** i have seen enough of those problems with my own eyes,the most comon problem i saw where collectors hitting the floorboards. that happend with more expensive headers aswell. That part is not about opinion its FACT!

Your opinion that you dont want to pay a premium for headers that might not fit well is a valid opionion and i dont have a problem at all with it and i have said it before none of the manufacturers are perfect they all have there isues and faulty products from time to time wish is bad.
 
If you say so. I spoke my piece and stand by it.
 
famous bob said:
this is interesting, I just re installed the tti`s on my 505"-68 fastback yesterday. I bought them off a guy from witchitaw(sp), I have an aftermarket front end, no torsion bars. the headers fit very good, even w/ new wrap on them, "which I hate". the wrap made them a little harder to install,but I didn`t want to spend the $ on them for coating, till I see that they`re going to hold up. I did quite a bit of dent staightening, and had a hard time getting in between 5-7 tube to weld them back together. 'SIDE NOTE" anyone trying to straighten up hammerbashed 2" headers, an 1 7/8" ball (towing) will drive thru the pieces once you cut them out to fix, may have to use a little heat tho----bob
Click to expand...


Uuuuugggghhhhh..... Nothing like trying to fix used, bashed aftermarket parts. Best of luck, Bob.
 
Dog, what size headers did you get? I am about to commit to headers myself.
 
SteveM said:
Dog, what size headers did you get? I am about to commit to headers myself.
Click to expand...

Get the Dougs and save yourself the trouble. They have more ground clearance and less fitment issues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top