Hey guys, i need some help with my header install...i ran into a very weird problem. I posted it on LS1tech since there are more people who may have used the SLP headers, so here's the link. Let me know if any of you have heard or experienced something like this:

http://www.ls1tech.com/forums/showthread.p...006#post9249006

Ryan I hope one of the suggestions that I gave you over the phone works. If you need anything else give me a call and I'll help you out as much as I can.

Good luck tomorrow.

Yes those ideas were really good! Again, thanks for allowing me to call and get some help, i really appreciate it! Anyways, i went over everything you said with my dad, and we tried to losen the nut...but it didn't move it enough to fit right. So i called my buddies custom exhaust place and asked how much he would charge me to fix all the fitment issues...he charged me 80 bucks so i just took it to him and he fixed everything. I'm going to attempt putting them in later tonight when my friend comes back over to lend me a hand, and my father will be home around 9 so hopefully we can finish up the hard part tonight, and i will finish bolting everything up tonight till it's done. I'll call you if i run into any problems though! Thanks again Sue, you've been a spectacular help to me!

You're more then welcome about calling and for the advice, just too bad that none of my suggestions helped much. And it's good to hear that your buddy was able to fix all the fitment issues and that he didn't charge you very much either.

Let us know how it goes with the final install.

And if you need to call again it's cool. I'm usually up until around 1am if you do.

Well tonight i was wrenching on it with my buddy and my father. It took us a lot of messing around with the passenger header trying to fit it in...we had to find new ways to jack up the car..so eventually we just jacked up the entire car. In order to get it in, from underneath the car, we had to disconnect the tranny from the crossmember. Then, my buddy benchpressed the tranny up as high as he could and i took a big breaker-bar and wedged the tranny as far towards the drivers side as we could go. Then, my buddy and father worked in the headers with NO ISSUES at all...they literally slid right in, all i had to do was keep that tranny off to the side till it slid in. I got everything connected, i just need to go to the auto parts store and get a 12" and 24" 02 sensor extension for the front 02's. I'll just tune the rears out soon.

Only thing left to do is bolt up the y-pipe, connect the sensors, and then put on the coils for the passenger side and i'm DONE.

Can't wait to finally get this thing on the road after a few days of working on it!

Cool. Glad to hear that you got them in and that you only need to get a few things to get them totally done and your car back on the road again.

And I did tell you in your other post that you'd need to get the car as far in the air as you could to give yourself enough height underneath and that you'd need to loosen everything up so that you could push stuff upwards to give yourself enough room to be able to slide them in.

But now you also see why I told you to give yourself at least a whole full weekend to work on them. Headers are definetly not something that you can rush putting in.

Oh and a couple of questions? How many swear words did the three of you say and how many bandaids did you have to use?

Yeah. The thing was, we only had 2 jack stands...but my friend brought over his set so we got the back end WAY up too. That made ALL the difference. That and moving the tranny out of the way. To be totally honest, none of us said any cross words at all, we all stayed very optimistic! It was actually a very easy job, it just required a lot of time to take off things that were in the way, but nothing was actually "difficult". However...for the bandaids...quite a few haha!!

One question...is it okay for the car if i leave the front 02's out till i get the new corvette ones. What if i plug the 02's in...but don't put them into the holes on the header. It will throw a code saying it's not working, but will it mess up the car in a bad way?

That's cool on the swear words and just what I figured on the bandaids.

You need to hook the front o2s back up again and put them into the holes. If you don't the computer won't know what the air/fuel ratio is for your car and you'll definetly have problems. So hook them up until you can get the Corvette ones. The most that will happen is that you'll get a code for the front ones telling you that they're not heating up correctly, which is totally normal since they won't heat up as fast with the LTs as they did with the stock headers.

okay cool that's what i figured based on what you told me over the phone, but i just wanted to make sure i understood 100% because i DEFINITELY don't want to cause any problems for the car at all. So here's what i was thinking. My dad is an electrical engineer and knows how to wire things inside and out...he even did all the electrical work for his retirement house. I was thinking of just extending the wire for the front 02's myself (well...have him do it ) and use that as a temporary solution till i get the vette sensors...since i need my car on the road ASAP. Only thing is, i want to make sure i'll be getting the right wiring and i need to put a waterproof shell on the wires. Seem like it is to difficult to do? I'm not sure where to get the waterproof sleeve for the wires, maybe sears or advanceautoparts?

Yea you can do that with the wiring until you can get the Corvette o2s. Since they're a 4 wire system, just get 4 different colored wires about the same size as the stock wiring is (one color to represent each connection in the pigtail) and then just match color for color at both ends. IE red wire ends to hole #1, blue color wires to hole #2, etc. That way you can be sure that the pigtail ends all match up.

As for the waterproof splice sleeves, you can get heat shrink tubing at places like Advance Auto, Auto Zone and even Radio Shack. You'll just need to get the larger size tubing so that it will slip over the pigtail connector to be sure that it's waterproof all the way around.

I FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!! And i couldn't have gotten it done so quickly without Sue Thanks for all the help Sue!!! My dad went ahead and lengthened the 02's, he had no problem with it. I just had to run to radioshack and pick up some extra wire (18 gauge stranded) along with some wire looms. I used the looms as my waterproof shield...it actually seems to work better than that mesh stuff cause the mesh wiring seems like water can get through. Anyways, i bought 10 feet of that stuff and we just totally covered all the wires with it just to be safe as a temporary solution. The only real issue i had was keeping the wiring harness away from the last header...but i got under there with some handy-dandy zip ties and went to work. TONS of clearance now. Nothing is touching...which is good of course...and i am DYING to start her up, but i think both my family and neighbors would be extremely pissed seeing how it's 4:30am and i just finished. Can't wait till morning!

I'll get a sound clip for you guys in the morning!!!!


Oh and on a side note for anybody who may be installing headers in the future....the SLP's take away a lot of clearance...and i mean a lot. FORGET about lowering your car...it's gonna scrape as is...just a notice for all you readers

Well i woke up early and took it for a quick drive this morning. HUGE difference in throttle response and lower end power. WOW!!!! And let me tell you, with the LM1 on there, that sucker is LOUD. I mean i've probably got the loudest car in a 10 mile radius hahaha. I think i am going to have to eventually swap off the muffler with the LMII resonator...

I can't believe it...i was driving around taking care of a few errands when the worst thing ever happened to me. I was almost home and i noticed that my speedo and tach starting jumping and going crazy. Then, the radio started going on and off and all the lights on the dash starting blinking on and off. About 30 seconds after that, my car started sputtering and then it eventually starting backfiring very bad and shut off. I pulled over and smoke was coming out from under my hood, so i popped it to take a look. There was a small fire down beneath the exhaust headers....omg. Luckily the intersection i passed right before this happened had 2 cops pullling somebody over and they came over to put it out.

Got it towed to my house, and from what i can see it looks like nothing is damaged, and the electrical is all working now. I am not going to start it up till my dad gets home to help me. We have to get under there to see what happened.

I was thinking, there is still a LOT of fumes and stuff under there, like PB blaster and oil / grease...i was thinking maybe that could have started it. I hope i don't have to buy a new wiring harness. What an AWFUL DAY!

Ryan, there really isn't that much on that side wiring wise that could catch on fire. The only things really over there beneath the exhaust header are the o2 wires, the wires for the starter and the ground wire from the battery/starter to the block, along with some other minor ones.

To me, from what you've described, it sounds like the ground wire for the car is loose and that it caused a spark that set off the PBlaster/oil that you used on that side. The main ground if it's loose can cause all the symptons, except the fire part, that you described.

But let me know what it was and call if you need to. I'm off until 1:30pm Thursday so I'll be up until my usual time tonight.

Thanks Sue. Yeah it did turn out to be the ground wire. My dad got under the car and found it right away. The battery cable somehow shorted out and i think that's how it set on fire...because that cable got fried. Weird thing is, it wasn't anywhere near the header. We are going to pull the starter on Monday and check out what happened, and if maybe the battery cable that attached to the starter was the cause of it. I dont know what else could have caused it, but that wire totally shorted out and caught fire somehow...

good news is that nothing else was damaged, just need to replace the 2 battery cables at 10 bucks each...not too bad. Although i haven't looked under the starter yet...

Good to hear you found the problem and that you were able to fix it for cheap. I sorta figured it was the ground wire from the way you described what the car was doing. As for the cable catching on fire and burning, I've seen them do that before if they short cause the wire heats up and melts the plastic covering of the wire which in turn starts to burn. If you take a piece of spare wire and take a lighter to it you'll see what I mean - first it'll get hot, then it'll smoke and then it'll get actual flames coming off it.

But how it probably happened is that with it being loose it hit against something metal under the car and caused a backfeed from the battery itself (ie a short to ground). If that happens what usually ends up happening is one of three things, depending on what the ground is for - 1 a fuse blows, 2 the battery completely drains or 3 what happened to you happens.

And the starter should be fine unless the battery backfeed through it but I'd get it checked out just to be sure like you plan on. Oh and get the alternator and battery checked too just to be sure about them also.

Yeah i think that's exactly what happened...it makes perfect sense. I just HOPE that i don't need to replace the starter or the alternator. Unfortunately, i have to wait till Monday because this weekend me, my brother, and my dad are going on a fishing tournament till Sunday. So on Monday i'll get him to check all those things to make sure they still work. I'm pretty sure the battery works because there is power going to the car still...i can turn the key and put the windows up and down and the radio comes on along with all the lights...so i'm pretty confident that it still works okay. Alternator and starter, i hope they are alright. I don't know if i can wait till monday to find out. And...i want my car back!!! I can't wait to drive her again..the power and sound that came out of it was unbelievable. Definitely the best mod i've done BY FAR

Well i just got back from the fishing tournament (we did pretty good...caught some good sized fish, so we'll see if we win anything haha) and me and my dad got back home around 730 just before it started to get dark. We were able to pull the starter and all the battery wires to find that it was actually the POSITIVE cable that caught fire. What he said happened was the cable (where it connects to the starter) came in contact with the starter down at the very edge of the starter. He said that it could have been vibrating and rubbing against the sharp edge, or that the arc of electricity was just enough to short out the wire and cause it to catch fire. It was WELL away from the headers so it definitely wasn't that, which was good. Only thing is...stupid advanceautoparts and autozone both gave me the wrong wires. I guess it's just cause they are generic and made to fit all types of cars...well the positive cable isn't the same (it only has 2 wires coming off it while the stock cable has 3). However, only the wire going to the starter fried, the other two went off somewhere completely different (to the alternator ect...) so i am just going to buy some of those battery connectors where you can put bare wire in and tighten the screws...and cut off the ends of the new wires.

Oh and on another good note, we checked the starter, (which had wire melted onto it) and it works just fine :-)

It should be on the road by tomorrow night if all else goes well.

Congrats on doing good at the tournament. I hope that you do end up winning something.

As for your car, that's cool that it was just something simple and that nothing else was damaged cause of it. But I know what you mean about the battery cables that Advance carries. I had to get a set for someone I know who lives out of the country to send to them since they were having problems with theirs and all I could find was the generic one size fits all kind too. So rather then getting those, I talked to the person and just ended up going to the dealer and getting a "good" set for him since that's what he wanted and was willing to pay what they wanted for them.

But good luck on getting the wires all fixed and your baby back on the road again.

thanks! I just want her on the road again. I miss driving her

She's running strong again!!!! I'll have some video clips up soon (either today or tomorrow) so you can all hear what the car sounds like

And Sue, thanks again for all of your help! You sure made it much easier for me to get this project done!!

Congrats on getting her all back together right and the problems fixed. Can't wait to hear the clips.

And you're more then welcome for the hints/tips/help. I'm just glad I was able to help you out as much as I was. If you need anything else you know where I'm at and how to get ahold of me.