I was wondering if anyone had any advice on installing new headers! I do not wanna pay some thousands of dollars to do it, and there are no videos that show anyone doing it! Any suggestions on a good strategy??

 

You can view here on the stock manifold removal.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...val-a960e.html

 

I used to work at a transmission shop it paid the bills.

At home this is a bit more work but I did plenty of side jobs too (R&R transmission) and to be honest we never took the headers off from anything. That said his needs and your needs are very different but you do need a lot of room to tilt the headers down to clear the earth.


Big tip is once you pull the steering shaft, DO NOT spin the steering wheel or you'll damage the clock spring and have another repair on your hands.

Spray all exhaust bolts starting a week in advance and most will come free when you need them too.


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If someone is following that link to pull the trans, ping me. There is a much less painful method than pulling the exhaust.

 

Since I've both installed and uninstalled a set of PPE headers, I can tell you this :

*You had better have a good collection of socket extensions and a swivel socket to attack all of those nuts.
*Make sure you have 4 automotive stands, as you'll want to have the car up off the ground as high as possible on all four corners.
*Have protective gloves, as I found myself battling it out with the OEM headers against the factory heat shielding along the "tunnels".
*Use new METAL exhaust gaskets when installing the new headers and new donut gaskets for the midpipes.
*Don't bother with the electronic O2 sim box that the headers come with. Get O2 sims like these that simply install into the factory O2 bungs : https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Oxygen-...MAAOSws-tbJIcV
*You'll want to follow PPE's advice with removing the one header stud on the passenger side.
*After a handful of heat-cycles, get back in there and retorque the nuts. I didn't and one of the nuts was loose causing a slight exhaust leak over the many months I had my setup.
*Before messing with the steering column, straight the wheel from inside the cabin. Then mark the column shaft and the collar where you're disconnecting them from each other (I used a Sharpie and a box cutter blade for a very fine mark inside the Sharpie mark). This way, you can simple re-align the two marks later.

 

how hard would you say this task was?

 

Well, considering I have ample experience working on cars in general and have all of the necessary tools, it wasn't hard. Just took a Saturday to complete by myself.

 

The install isn't too bad, I was able to wing it in an afternoon by myself. I would suggest reading the instructions from PPE, I didn't and missed some steps that would have made things easier.

 

would you say you can install headers without messing with the steering column?

 

YES!,I managed to remove my headers in an hour ,No steering column needs to come out just gotta have some small hands ,Passenger side remove the whole intake box system and you can easily access all the header bolts.It is not a 9 hour job like Pepole say.