72 Swinger. 318 Long story short: I had a reman 318 put in the car and it came back with a cracked driver exhaust manifold near where one of the center bolts went through. I obtained a good manifold (same stamp 2951123) from a kind forum member here and brought it all to an exhaust shop that deals with old cars.
The guy at the exhaust shop told me that the manifold is hitting the block (or maybe the head) where it curves down and around to connect to the pipe. He says the old manifold has marks on it where it was ground down to fit at some point. It appears that the old one cracked because it got torqued down when there was still a bit of clearance issue on the reman engine. He is going to attempt to grind some material off the manifold in a similar manner that the old one was ground, but warned me that there's a chance we ruin the manifold in the process.
I don't know the # of my reman 318 block, (I assume it was from a year close to 72), and I wasn't aware that there is an issue of block/manifold compatibility (i.e. I thought manifold differences were about clearing the PS box, not about whether they actually fit on the engine).
Has anyone run into a similar problem?
I know some will tell me to get headers and that may be the ultimate answer, but I'm really just trying to get a nice driver going. Performance is not my goal here -- just a working car without an exhaust leak -- and I assumed that stock components were the most surefire way to get there.
I'd be thankful for any and all advice here. The car is at the shop and I'm at work, so I asked him to send me pictures and I'll add them if he does.
