First job was to trial fit headers, the spacing of the holes in the flanges meant that the heads of the bolts wouldnt clear the headers but luckily Max was on hand to do some re-shaping with a hammer. I marked roughly the point where the pipes come through the body on the passenger side and cut a slot, then slowly enlarged it with a dremel until I could get the collector on.
The instructions in the Dax "build manual" (HAHAHAHAHAHA!) say to leave a healthy fingers width between the sidepipe and the body work so this determines how much the collectors have to be pushed onto the headers. Top tip from Dave Brookes, make sure the headers are unequal lengths and its a lot easier to get the collector on rather than trying to line up 4 pipes at once. Leave the headers slack on the cylinder head bolts to give wiggle room.
Toilet roll and kitchen paper roll centres are extremely useful for cooling pipe and exhaust related jobs :)
Everything in place ,just need to widen the hole in the body slightly and tidy up the edge, then paint the pipes. Couple of other things became apparent on the passenger side, I'll have to slightly relocate the clutch hydraulic line as where I've got it p-clipped to the chassis rail it is only 5mm away from one of the headers. Not the end of the world though.
The drivers side is a different story, the header from the rearmost cylinder (number 8 I think?) on its journey to the collector goes right through the steering column, which will have to move up a bit. That's next weeks job.
