I pulled the exhaust manifolds from the parts car today and have a couple of questions:

First, I did not see any gaskets. I sat there scratching my head as I looked at the manifolds on the ground, then at the heads, manifolds again...etc. Aren't they supposed to have gaskets??

Second, the intent of these manifolds is to port and creamic coat them. Quite franlky, I really can't see any areas that need a whole lot of porting. Some smoothing perhaps but that'* about it. Am I missing something here?




Third, the heat shields look like crap and are nearly falling off. One already has. With the ceramic coating, will the heat shields be necessary?? Can I remove them and grind off the mounting points? Will the spark plug boot insulators be necessary after the coating?

Thanks

Hmm... I'd think there'd be a gasket... After coating I'd still use the spark plug boots. And removing the heatsheild should be okay. Make sure you get lots of pics eh?

The gaskets are metal and might be squished against the heads so they probably blend in. Get your nails in there and start scratching for them.

As for porting, ARE YOU BLIND?! LOL just messin'
You can port a lot in there. First look at each port, see the welds on the inside right where it meets the flange? Grind those out and weld on the OUTSIDE (not the inside like silly ol' GM). Check out the downpipe, same goes for there. As for the where the rear mani enters the downpipe, you can take out a big chunk in there near the O2, but be careful because you can easily make a hole if you're not careful. Just make sure you got a welder nearby.
While looking through the same rear manifold "collector", you will see a pipe coming down from each exhaust port. Try cutting those out closer to make a smoother flow.

First time I had my manifolds off I about vomitted by the lack of quality.

im plannin on doin the exact same project very soon, but to add what you already plan to do, i would defianately heat wrap the manifolds while they are off, will cut underhood temps, and i think theres a sealer paint that you can also spray on the outside of the heatwrap if im not mistaken :? but keep up the good work!

I do see what you are saying about the inside welds. This is the area that looks like it just needs some smoothing. I'm going by the inside diameter of each cylinder "tube". There'* not a lot of material that can be removed without cutting into the inner surfaces.

As far as the rear outlet goes, it looks like a big mouth bass to me. Wide open. No sharp edges either.

That'* exactly what'* on my list.

I taking the ceramic coating route rather than heat wrap. I wouldnt think that the two together would really be that much better and dont like the way heat wrap looks.

I do want to make sure that the coating will do the job of keeping the underhood temps down well. What'* the general concensus? Wrap or coat?

both from what ive heard, heat coat, wrap, then your choice to spray on the sealer or not.

Hah! So I'm not going crazy. Whew...

It seems as if using a gasket is optional when reinstalling. I vote Pro Gasket.

Hey Kyle, he'* got Series 1 manifolds, completey different from the Series 2(which look horrible).
The guy that I got my ported manifolds from said there wasnt too much to do with the Series 1, pretty much just cosmetic stuff and not too much for performance.
Otherwise the coating should cut down on engine heat a lot!