Manifold to header flange gasket.

[cerial]

I picked up some ram horn manifolds for $5 today. They are square bore and will give more room for removing the angled plugs. I wont go into the why just know this will be the 3rd exhaust system I built for this truck in 6 months On the upside I am getting really good at building them and this should be the last one for a while.

Anyway back to the manifolds. I have some block hugger headers on there now with a 2" outlet. I really don't want to play with doughnut gaskets again. I would love to use a flat gasket between the mating surface of the flange and manifold if at all possible.

Should I use springs or not with the current exhaust studs?

Any tricks/recommendations on gaskets that wont leak? I like my exhaust quiet so any leak will end up causing yet another redesign.

The exhaust is connected to the heads with the passenger side dropping down and back while the drivers side drops down then 90's into the passenger pipe then to two junk mufflers (they will be replaced with a newer cat/quiet flow) that have two rubber clamps in opposing directions to provide a very ridgid setup.