O8 STA Headers ?

[DSGTURBOSVO]

So I have the usual passenger side exhaust manifold leak and was thinking I'll just make the job easier and pull the motor and install headers so my question is are any of you running headers and if so what brand and how do they fit? I'm not really looking for a performance upgrade as much as a permanent fix to my problem.

 

[Floordford]

1) As far as I know there are no companies that make 4.6L Explorer/ Sport Trac headers, long, mid or short.
2) You have plenty of room to do it keeping the motor in the engine bay. You don't even need to loosen the motor mounts.

You can get new exhaust manifolds or have your old ones planed. I chose to plane mine and it worked out fine. The bear of the project is extracting broken off exhaust studs from the head. Takes patience and specific tools. There is a guy on YouTube that is a Ford mechanic that does a pretty good write up that was more than helpful when I did mine.

 

[DSGTURBOSVO]

1) As far as I know there are no companies that make 4.6L Explorer/ Sport Trac headers, long, mid or short.
2) You have plenty of room to do it keeping the motor in the engine bay. You don't even need to loosen the motor mounts.

You can get new exhaust manifolds or have your old ones planed. I chose to plane mine and it worked out fine. The bear of the project is extracting broken off exhaust studs from the head. Takes patience and specific tools. There is a guy on YouTube that is a Ford mechanic that does a pretty good write up that was more than helpful when I did mine.

Thanks for the info on this. I appreciate it. I will look for the you tube video. I'm wondering if having them plane'd is a permanent fix or will they warp again?

 

[Floordford]

Thanks for the info on this. I appreciate it. I will look for the you tube video. I'm wondering if having them plane'd is a permanent fix or will they warp again?

I think the issue is that when the studs break it then allows the manifold to warp. I upgraded my studs to stainless steel. I think the stock Ford equipment is mild steel. So it rusts out, weakens and breaks. It holds up for 100-150k in most cases so even if you put stock in you bought another 100-150k.

 

[SixPonies]

Check out this YouTube channel. Tons of great videos, including ones on replacing the manifolds and dealing with broken studs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN467fmgLLlk98JddJLL51w

 

[DSGTURBOSVO]

Thanks for the info. Where did you get stainless studs, Ford?

 

[DSGTURBOSVO]

I'll check out the Videos. Thanks.

 

[Floordford]

Thats exactly who I was talking about. And I found my stud set on Amazon i think.