I bought a pair of used headers on ebay, but one thing I did not expect was that where the tubes go through the flange there is weld material all around the tube and it appears to be uneven. Are header gaskets that forgiving? I can't imagine they are and I guess that is why the headers were so cheap. Should I weld up the tubes to the outside part of the flange and mill the inner welds flush with the flange? Am I worrying about nothing and just leave it as is?
i went thru 3 sets off ebay, chrome shorty headers, none of the ones I found would work. got my $$ back, but if you want to weld and grind....
You didn't say whether or not yours were like this. I'm not afraid to do what needs to be done, my question is, what needs to be done?
They had 10mm flanges, chrome shorty headers. Where the pipe went into the flange a weld was placed that raised off the flange {head/block side} about 1/10" and was milled down. The welds were either incomplete or had slag left over. A gasket would have never fixed the problem. That's probably what somebody else got, never could seal and resold to you. sorry. If you have a mig or tig you may fix them. headers are sensitive and take a really even, tight seal to hold.
After seeing the pic I stand by my previous post, they were bought by somebody who resold them to you. If you can get them to infact say they knew of this problem and did not list it in the advert you are entitled to a refund, but.... -ps- can you get a closeup of the worst one?
Seems like the set up to mill those things would be a bitch unless you removed the flange, flycut the BARE MINIMUM to clean up (not counting the shrink line from welding heat) then welded them on the outside as long as it was bolted up to something to avoid warpage..other than the owner's warpage. At that point, it would be just as easy to make your own flanges (jesus, I don't even like talking about them). You could probably get decent results from a P-grinder or an OCC approve side grinderl, too.
Looking from here it looks like the welds were milled/ground down by a machine and are flat all the way across. In other words, no one weld around a tube is higher than the others. If that's so, the ground flat - but not all the way down - welds are designed to be the flat area the header gasket seals to. If not, you can knock the welds down with a Pearl wheel (some call it a flap wheel) flush with the flange and run a fillet of braze around the tube/flange juncture on the outside. If you want to be precise, grind down most of the way and draw file the rest of the way. The gasket now seals against the flat flange area and the brazing on the outside supports the tube in addition to what remains of the original weld. Skip the official hot rod header gaskets and use stock ones.
They look about like the flanges on all the headers I've used. Like C9 said, if you can lay a straightedge across the welded rings and they all line up, that's the way they should seal. It's better than a flat flange, sorta like o-ringing a block to hold head gaskets, it'll pinch the gasket better. Just tighten the bolts evenly so the flange isn't cocked. If they aren't flat, you could get them surfaced on a belt type surfacer, I've done it in the past to save an abused set.
Sorry, but even if those headers fit perfectly, the only thing that would be good about them is that they'd fit. That's because they'd still be blockhugger headers, and blockhuggers are shitty because the primaries are too short to give you optimum torque on the street, which was the point of putting headers on instead of factory manifolds. Fuck those Chinese blockhugger headers. What you need is some conventional, traditional headers. Dave http://www.roadsters.com/
Dave, you may be right but I think these will work better because of my odd application, 454 into a '62 C10. Jay, thanks for the common sense answer, I can always rely on you.
They look exactly like most of the new headers. They actually get a better seal by having the milled weld dig into the thick asbestos header gasket. That is done that way on purpose. They won't work well with the old factory style pressed steel or sandwich gasket. They will seal fine.
Check out sanderson on the web they have some pics on how to make the welds. I made my own from scratch and welded this little detail to them and they seal fine. I use copper gaskets, and that is all.
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