1969 camaro header modification

[chev-obsession]

Hey guys,

This isn't for my truck, but I figured that this might help one of you guys, or some one you might know! I wished we would of taken a little moe pics but we were blowin' and goin'!! So it was kinda hard to.

The driver's side header on my freinds '69 camaro was constantly scraping over the smallest of bumps ever since the 2" drop spindles were installed, so my friend and I decided to remedy the problem. Here's what we came up with, and a few pics of the process

I'll admit, there are some gaps between what we did along the way. I got a bit caught up in the work, but remembered to grab the camera every once in awhile!



Here's what we were looking at for ground clearance before:

Driver's:




Passenger's:






1. The passenger's side is decent and only scrapes over large bumps, so we decided to only modify the driver's side for now.
Clearance came out to be right around 2.25", and the frame rail sits right at 3.5", leaving us a goal of removing 1.25 vertical inches from the header.

Header clearance:



Frame rail:






2. Started out by cutting all of the primaries in half, while removing the #1 primary to aid in welding. Tacked the #5 primary together and dropped it in to test fitment.











3. I was pleased with how it turned out, so the tacks on #5 were welded solid and then ground down, and then we started the process of heating and bending to get the other primaries to fit as they should.

(my freind ryan is in the green, and i have the torch, just in case you're wondering who is who.)






4. After #3 was fitting as it should it was welded solid and ground flush we well. Here you can see us working on the fitment for #7.







5. I missed the #1 primary, but it took a very minor amount of cutting, and dimpling in one place to clear everything and sit flush.
The collector flange was pretty messed up from scraping so much, so we decided to chop the tube and replace it with a spare that i had laying around in the shop.











6. We groud down that weld both inside and out, since we could get to it, and here they are done and waiting to get sand blasted.








i didnt get a chance to take a pic of it nice and clean after getting blasted or painted but it turned out great and no longer scrapes at all!!

Now we just need to put a nice exhaust on it! im trying to talk him into taking it to a shop but he is leaning more towards a "custom" 3 inch so... we will see how it goes!