There are not a lot of header choices out there when you put a Ford small block 302 in the 1956 Ford car. I tried 2 different sets, 302 block huggers and mustang shorty headers, neither would clear the factory steering box and just plain would NOT work. Finally I found a set that would fit and clear thanks to some tips from some other 50′s ford rodders. Great, so what are they??

The headers I could finally use turned out to be 1966 Mustang Tri-Y headers for a 302 engine. The particular ones I am using are made by Patriot exhaust and are ceramic coated. The part number is H-8426-1 and I bought them from Summit Racing. The headers fit really good, but of course it created another problem. The tri-y’s are full length headers and they are so long that they come out about 6″ past the factory exhaust holes in the 56 ford frame. Take a look at the pictures below, you can see the header is past the exhaust hole.

First you may ask yourself, why dont you just run the exhaust straight out, and not go through the holes. I sure wish I could, but its not possible with the transmission and crossmember where it is, so without more fabrication, this is the only way.

So to me, I have two choices here that would be the easiest. Option 1 is to cut a new (further down) exhaust hole and patch the existing one up for strength. The problem with this is I will need to re-route my emergency brake cable setup on the drive side because it would interfere. Option 2 is to cut the header off at as short as possible, and also at an angle so I can utilize the factory exhaust hole. Since the header collector pipe is 2.5″ and I am running 2.5″ exhaust, the header will still be a full length header technically speaking, I am just adjusting the right curvature to it.

So after much debate and talking to friends I chose to go with option 2 and cut the header. So as you recall this is what we started with.

We needed to determine a good angle to cut the header so it would point toward the hole. The plan is to cut it at an angle and once cut, simply spin the pipe 180 degrees and weld back together. I just used what I had laying around which happened to be a stick of 1″ PVC pipe. We cut it the first time at about a 45 degree angle. That wouldn’t work, it was too much angle. The next cut seemed to be about perfect and was roughly 35 degrees give or take. See the pics below of the PVC cut.

PVC cut at roughly 35 degree angle to test. Once cut its just flipped 180 degrees and placed back together.

Just seeing how it would look

Now that we have the correct angle to cut the pipe, we went under the car and marked the pipe with a marker to make sure when we cut it that it would angle straight at the exhaust hole and not angled down or up. That is critical part of this, otherwise your pipe may be at an angle that doesnt allow it to fit through the exhaust hole. You could use a number of things to cut it, chop saw, grinder with a cutoff wheel, bandsaw, etc.. This one was cut with a porta-band saw and then lightly ground smooth.

Now that its cut and smoothed out we rotate it 180 degrees to get the angle we want.

Flipped around 180 degrees like our PVC pipe was.

Everything looks good and fits good so its time to tack it a few times and install the header and see how it fits.

Have it tack welded in 3 places

Added V-band collar to see how it all fits

Looks like it will work perfect just as it is so lets weld it on up.

I bought some silver color caliper high heat paint that will be applied to all the welded areas inside and out to keep the rust away.

Now we need a flange for this baby to mate our exhaust system. You will notice in some of the pics above the “collar” at the end of the header tube. I decided to go with V-band flanges instead of using the standard gasket type flanges. These were recommended to me by a guy that builds turbo applications, I had not heard of them before. He said when installed correctly the will never leak and have a perfect seal, and you never have to worry about gaskets again. Sounded good to me, so I ordered up a set.

V-band flanges

I wont go into a ton of detail about the v-band’s and how they work, because I am no expert. The ones I bought were just big enough to slip right over the header pipe with a little convincing, so we slide the collar on and tig welded them on the inside.

Now my headers are back on the car and I am ready to either build the remainder of the exhaust system or take it to the shop. That is still to be determined…. Hope this will help out some of you who are in a similar bind. Happy rodding!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 at 11:30 AM and is filed under Engine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.