Header installation with supercharger

[KYmxracer52]

I’ve suspected for a while that I’ve had a small exhaust manifold leak, where I hear the ticking on cold startup. A week or two ago I was smelling exhaust fumes inside the cab upon startup and shortly thereafter, with all windows and doors closed. Truck isn’t driven daily, so today I did a pressure test from manifolds to the tips. Found substantial leaks on both manifolds. Each side was leaking on front cylinders and at back cylinders. Looked like all studs were still intact, at least the best I could see. Some slip joints along the Corsa cat back has some leakage, but I found my main issues in the manifolds. I don’t drive the truck hard, but I figure the Whipple caused the manifold failures. I’m wondering if I may as well install headers if I’m going to the trouble of removing the manifolds anyway. Probably leaning towards Kooks for the better cats, but still undecided. It’ll be a Y pipe setup ran into my existing Corsa.

My question is this….those of you with the Whipple, did you have enough room to jack the the motor up when removing the manifold to install headers, or did you have to remove the blower housing first? I have nearly no space above the blower to the cowl. If so, this will add a good amount of additional time to the job.

Is a thermal coating worth the money on headers? I hated to start a new thread, but searched for a few hours and never found anything mentioned about install issues with the Whipple in place.

 

[pcs]

i ceramic my long tubes along with the cross over pipes that go under the transmission. imo every bit helps to reduce under hood temps and minimize heat transferred to the transmission. id consider your motor mounts while you are in there since they are easy to remove without the exhaust in the way.

 

[Guardrail]

I don't have a supercharger on mine. When I did my manifolds, the service manual said to remove the intake. I needed that space to get the bolts out.