Club Cobra - Kirkham side pipe mounting

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Kirkham side pipe mounting

I just finished mounting my kirkham stainless side pipes. I am posting this to help others in the future.

First, convention has the Ford FE cylinders numbered 1 through 4 on passenger side, and 5 through 8 on driver's side. this is different than chevy conventions

when connecting the passenger side, I loosely mounted #4 and then #1, and then did 2 and 3 last. they went in easily from outside the body, but I did not have the starter in position. just a little moving them around. Of note, I had them wrapped in paper from the polisher, so no scratches on insertion

The driver's side was more difficult. The correct sequence turned out to be:
first #8, then #5. then 7 and then 6. can't do 6 then 7. ask me how I know. also had to remove the steering shaft to get them in, but then it wasnt so bad

for attaching the side pipes to the header tubes, i put lots of grease in the sidepipes, and then worked them in, with the header tubes very loose on the engine. it all fit really nicely. It seems anything I get from Kirkham really is well engineered - I am so used to aftermarket parts NEVER fitting properly from my previous experiences with everything else I have done.

I will include some pictures soon. happy new year to all

Nice write up!
They are a bit tricky.

here are just a few pics of the installed pipes. i originally planned to do unpolished stainless (have to save some money somewhere), but the pipes unpolished are not so attractive, and they look absolutely fantastic when polished, so I did that.

i planned to polish myself, but after 30 minutes of work and almost no progress, I found a local polisher who did a great job for a lot of money (although, as with polishing the entire car, still probably better off paying someone else to do it than doing it myself)

How do you know which headers are which??

the cylinder number is stamped on the mounting flange for each individual tube

Yep - that Ford cylinder numbering convention has tripped up more than one old Chevy guy on header assembly. They look nice.

Here is what my unpolished SS headers look like after less than 2K miles:
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0...fa&oe=58EAE598

Your polished headers will discolor from heat as well. I'm going to have mine ceramic coated, which is cheaper than polishing and will not discolor. They can be done to look almost chrome like, but I'm going to simply go with black for maximum cooling benefit in the engine bay.