The H words.

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1969GTS

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You ever notice how all the most knuckle scraping, sweat dripping, cussing and beer consuming jobs all start with an "H". Like the fun jobs of installing a headliner, replacing a heater core or fighting with your HEADERS!. Got my 340 back in after painting the engine bay and opted for the new expensive copper gaskets. When I fired it up they leaked like a British oil seal. No amount of tightening and re torquing helped. Oh well back to the fiber ones and trying to finish the sale panels on my headliner. The Performer RPM Air Gap is a tight fit. As in a quarter inch from the hood. The wing nut has to go.

Small victories

Dave

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I went to parts store and got a little shorter air element and it helped I will get number if you want.Kevin.
 
Thanks. That would be great. I was running a Holley strip dominator and the Edelbrock is a good inch taller.
 
One trick we did was go to the autoparts store and look at the cheap chrome air cleaners, different manufacturers have a different amount of "drop" to them and you can just buy the air cleaner that works best and swap out the base and keep your lid, it will allow you to drop the aircleaner down around the carb a little more so you can keep a taller element.

Just a tip.
 
OK.Tell us which headers you have, and if the fiber gasket solved the leak problem
 
Thanks for the air cleaner tip. My headers are headman and the fiber gaskets were way better than the copper.
 
Oh yah I forgot about that H word nightmare. I lived that live a few weeks back.
 
1969GTS said:
Thanks for the air cleaner tip. My headers are headman and the fiber gaskets were way better than the copper.
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I agree, I tried the copper gaskets with my hedman headers and they leaked bad. I think the issue is the hedmans have a raised bead around each port that is supposed to seal the gasket better. The copper gaskets also have a riased bead around each port. What I found when I removed the copper gaskets was that the raised beads don't match making for nice paths for the exhaust to leak past.

I have been using Fel Pro header gaskets and have found them to seal very well, 20k miles and I am just now starting to get a small leak I can hear under load.
 
Fel Pro it is. I had the cheap fiber ones that came with the set and they seemed to seal fine but your right about the copper ones. Its like they are not there at all, BAD leaks. I'll be going back to fiber.

thanks
 
Its official copper gaskets and headman headers are not a good combination. I replaced them with good old Mr gasket fiber ones and no leaks. The raised bead on the headman's and the raised bead on the copper gasket don't like up and they leak like hell. Don't waste your money if you have headman headers. I followed this advice http://www.thepontiactransampage.com/headerseal.html and they sealed great.

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