enigo

Had all the exhaust parts ordered and sitting in the car. Had the appointment at the exhaust shop made, now just had to swap the hold stock headers for the spiffy KFX ones and drop the car off...

Well, things never go smoothly for me. At least with my luck anyways.

After getting everything off, and the KFX headers in, I look down and lo and behold they don't fit... its running smack into the side of the oil pan. As it turns out it seems the KFX headers weren't designed to fit the Beta 2 engine, and I had just so happened to have swapped the Beta 2 engine into my car. (The oil pan on the Beta 2 is slightly bigger than the Beta 1)

So I called the exhaust shop and canceled the appointment...

Somehow I had been under the impression that the KFX headers would fit the Beta 2 no problem, and it seems that belief stemmed from some small comment made in the Equal Length Headers thread which was never officially answered beyond "think so."

Here are the pictures of fitment:










What to do from here? You guys think that its possible to modify the headers easily to fit? How should I go about doing it?

REDz mentioned that it has been fit on beta2 engines but that the beta2 oil pan tends to vary a little bit... so my choice of the XD Beta2 might have been just my type of luck. Should I consider swapping oil pans?

Am I making a mistake somewhere in the install? With it firmly pressed against the engine, it makes little to no difference.

Thanks for the help!

Overview picture:

hamhead

Does said shop have a mandrel bender?

Doesn't look like you have enough room to dent in the pan to make it fit, but I don't really know as I'm not looking at the car. If you can't dent the oil pan in, either get an addition of pipe to have it skirt around the pan.

The annoying part of that is that your o2 sensor bung is right where they would need to bend it, so it might mess up the bung that is welded in for that if you do bende it, so might as well have it cut off behind that and work from there.

What I'd probably recommend in you don't want to beat in your oil pan is to get the shop to cut the bottom part of the downpipe after the collectors merge, and have them bend you a lil section of pipe from there on since you had an exhaust appointment I'm assuming your redoing it all anyway.

Extra parts/labor shouldn't be that bad since it'll already be on a lift and such anyway.


Sucks to have to modify bolt-on parts but you never know.

SOCKS_old

yeah, your gonna have to modify that quite a bit. the beta I oil pan doesn't come straight down in that location, kinda arcs up on a curve.

you could throw a beta I pan on there, but that would be a downgrade.

or you can have them cut the bottom elbow.

and do one of these.

step one. heres the line to have em cut (roughly)


step 2. rotated up and welded in place should almost make it perfect.

hamhead

^^ What I said in photoshopped form. Good photoshopping I might add, lol. That does seem to be the easiest solution.

enigo

Thanks for the tips guys, thought and talked it over with a friend and we had pretty much came to the same conclusion.

The shop doesn't have a mandrel bender (but I have a motoria catback for bends, subing a mangaflow resonator, summit racing glasspack, and dynomax super turbo muffler as well as a magnaflow cat)...

But there is an excellent welder/machinist that I know how could make the cuts and welds. He's an older guy and is one of those super old school welder types that can and does all sorts of crazy stuff. Probably be a cinch for him to do it, and if he can't can always go to the exhaust shop.

Thanks for the photoshop Socks, now i can just take my laptop in and show what needs to be changed. Hopefully all goes well and this time next week I'll have everything setup and installed.

SOCKS_old

good deal!!

your welcome and good luck!!

enigo

Update:

Here is a pic of the Header modified to move over a lil bit:



Pic of the rest of the exhaust setup. Have a glasspack + resonator before muffer (and cat too, since I like healthy lungs)


Car is quiet now... with a deep rumble while accelerating. It seems that magnaflow resonator really did the trick!

SOCKS_old

welding on the header fix looks like poo tongue.gif but as long as it works, thats all that matters.. exhaust setup looks pretty nice.. any pics from behind the car?

enigo

Yeah, I agree... the weld job made me cringe a bit... Makes me want to take it off the car and clean up the inside because I'd expect lots of spatter and crap.

But, other than that, the exhaust is great! The stainless steel mandrel bends... the quietness + deep rumble is exactly what I was going for.


I'll snap a pic of the rear part later, probably when I resolve this O2 sensor thing

mwood

yeah the welds do look like crap, but as long as you love the setup that is what matters....

also post an exhaust clip of some sort, when you get pic of rear