Finally got my Kooks 1 7/8" headers and x-pipe installed yesterday. Took several hours on my buddys lift at the dealership. Even though every bolt came out easy and nothing broke, no way would I tackle what we did in the driveway.
Oil had to be drained to remove the dry sump oil lines to get the header up there, so plan on $100 bucks for an oil change. Header was a tight fit too, even with the lines out of the way. I ordered a Thermo Tec starter heat shield, and 1"-1.5" velcro heat sleeve shield in 12' length.
I also installed my Elite Engineering ceramic coated tunnel brace since I wasnt going to coat the x-pipe, but still wanted heat resistance and chasis stiffness. Here are some pics.




Always nice to have a friend with a lift.





X-pipe removed





Driver side stock.





Passenger side stock.





Oil lines before.





Starter, and lines before.






Ordered from Summit Racing.





Thermo Tec 2000 deg velcro heat shield sleeves and starter cover installed.





Oil lines wrapped.





Elite Engineering ceramic coated and thermal barrier tunnel brace compared to stock.





Punched out the hole in the thermal barrier to allow us to run the O2 wires above the plate. It was a little tricky and tight since I wrapped the O2 extensions with heat sleeves.





Bought some OEM gaskets because ive heard the ones the headers come with arent good. And I didnt want to go through all this work and not be able to reuse the original gaskets. $29 bucks for new ones was worth it and the peace-of-mind.





O2s mounted and headers ready to go in.





Oil drained and the dry sump lines removed. The lines are kind of rigid, so we removed the black braided on first, which then made it easy to slightly flex the silver coated line and remove it.





All bolted up.








Good clearance, and the lines are all adequately shielded.

 

Great photo documentation.
I had headers & x-pipe done on mine awhile back too. You have a pretty good camera! That was a good idea wrapping some stuff under there!
On mine, my only regret w/getting mine done was not getting many photos of the installation.

(My set up is coated 1 7/8" ARH LT's & coated Zo6 Catted X) W/the tuning & new axleback exhaust it really woke it up in the HP/TQ department.

 

I did this 2 times on floor stands in my garage! aint that bad once you know what to do. Second time, I lowered the motor cradle, the headers went right in!

 

Thanks AA-Ron, nice to see photos of the install. Maybe I missed it but why didn't you ceramic coat the whole system?? Wouldn't that sort of preclude all the thermal wrap ???
They look super What does it sound like now and let us know how the power went up also.
NSF

 

Thanks for the write up. Getting ready to do the same to my GS, if my headers ever get here. Like the starter wrap with the bands, will be ordering mine on Monday.

 

I did some research and lots of reading before I got the headers coated. Too much system coating I heard can lead to the heat not flowing out of the engine properly. Bottling up the heat can lead to detonation. The cost to coat the x-pipe was like $20/foot x2 for the double pipe. I was able to make the chassis more rigid and get thermal protection barrier with the Elite Engineering tunnel brace for about the same price. The thermal wrap could be redundant, as some forum members never heat wrapped anything and ran uncoated headers and were fine. Others talk about boiling lines and burning through them even with coated headers.
Something to consider is that some installs on the forum are for LS7 and base model Corvettes. This impacts the clearances for dry sump. This made taking advise hard, because you also had to consider the header tube thickness and fluid line proximity. Basically I didn't want to take any chances. While I had about $2,000 invested into the headers and catted x-pipe and had the car up in the air, I wanted to go the extra mile and do it while it was all apart. A little precautionary $$ now could save me a lot of trouble down the line with damaged lines due to the excess heat. Rumors of burned out starters have been recorded too. Also the Kooks install instructions never mention draining the oil. Good thing I called and spoke with ELI at Kooks who prepared me. Running into this unexpectedly while stuck on the lift could have sucked.
I had QC in Shelby TWP, MI do the ceramic coating on them and they have a 2 year warranty. They came highly recommended by Jason at KATECH. Good enough for KATECH= good enough for me.
I can tell you they make the car sound much more bold, and have a nice mellow tone to them, which I like. They also retained the gurgle/backfire popping sound when downshifting which I was happy about. I have the 3" header x 3" x-pipe into my stock 2.5" NPP with manual control of the butterflies. I haven't got a CEL yet, but I have not been running the car at WOT since they are not yet tuned.
As for power gains I cant tell you because KATECH is installing a Magnuson TVS2300 Jackshaft Roots blower next week and Dr. Phil will be tuning it when its all done, so I cannot give you an answer on the power...YET.
I hope I answered your questions, I think I wrote a novel.

 

Took a few weeks for my headers to ship from Kooks, but the x-pipe took a month for them to make and ship. I wanted to have more material handy then start the project and find out that I should have. Believe me, I read a lot of posts, and the problem was that there were so many opinions on what you do and do not need, that I decided to go with the worst case scenarios and go the safer route. Just remember that you will need to change the oil, and that people say not to use the supplied gaskets. O2 sensors are about $80 each, so take your time removing the ones from the stock manifolds so you can re-use them.

 

Nice!

I just did the same mods last summer. Best money spent.

Although i didn't wrap my starter i figure i don't use the car often for enough damage to occur??

 

Mine is an A6 so won't have to deal with the oil lines. Also ordered new gaskets and ARP studs. I see you used locking fastners. I also have tried to think of everything I will need when I have it up on my friends lift so I won't be surprised. Also want to supercharge, but that will have to wait awhile. Thanks for the pictures.