TRoadster
New Member
I'm sitting here at work after midnight, in-between jobs, and I a little bore. So I log onto my favorite bucket site and I think, how can I waste some time. So I thought, wouldn't it be great to read a collection of stories about went wrong with something or what happened on the road, etc. Since I'm not on the road yet, I thought I'd pass this along. You would think its a no brainer but... well. By the way, I post about this a few weeks ago. So... I'm using a bbb, big block buick, late 60's 430. No one makes headers for these engines to fit hot rods, street rods, etc unless you pay for custom pipes. That costs $. I don't want to spend a lot of $ on headers so I bought a old set of rusted buick headers, cut off all the orginal tubing and built a lakster style header for my track T. Unfortunately, I did not like the look. I started to look else where for other ideas. Speedway motors had do-it-yourself header kits. They had a 2" bbc kit which looked like it would work. So I bought it. The box sat for a month while I did other work. When I was ready, I opened the box and removed everything inside.(I did check for damage when it arrived) I laid everything out. I looked everthing over. I then started on the new headers. I cut the lakster tubing down to a 2" long end. By the way, they were made from 1 7/8 tubing. With a little finesse, I managed to get the 2" tubing to just fit over the 1 7/8 tubing. Tacked everything. Checked and rechecked heights and clearances. Everything looked great. I welded everythink up, bolted the header to the block and everything was good. I then decided to double check the height of the bottom of the collecter tubing to the ground. As I looked down at my tape measure, I noticed light come from inside the collector. Now let me say this. There were no instructions in the box the tubing came in. No pictures, no drawings, no hey stupid don't.... Yes, I never thought about welding the area where the four tubes come together. At this point I had three options. First, pull out all my hair as I ran around the yard like a mad man. Second, cut the tubing just behind the collector, then weld up the large hole and finally weld on a new collector(which I would have to buy). Or third, cut the collect back about three inches from the end, enough to weld the hole where all four tubes come together, then reweld the end of the collector back. I choose the third option and luckily it worked. I will need to blend the welds a little but that's not a problem. Of cousre, now that I learned my lesson, I welded up the hole of the other side before I welded the collector inplace. That all being said, it dosen't matter how well you plan something sometimes, sh*t just happens.
