NJFBOA - Home of New Jersey's Camaros and Firebirds - View Single Post - '69 Firebird 350 -- heads only have 4 bolts for the exhaust manifolds!

JohnG · 12-18-2007, 02:42 PM

I bought this car not too long ago, it has a stock motor with exhaust manifolds. Would you believe -- this particular poncho is missing two bolt holes on each head !

The headers have 6 bolt holes per head. I did a little reading on this, and it seems that Pontiac 350's from '68 - '69 did indeed come like this from the factory.

I really don't want to swap them out for 400 heads, nor do I want to pull the heads to drill & tap new holes (both of those approaches break my budget at the moment), so I'm thinking of getting a real good set of Copper gaskets & do the install with the 4 bolt mounting.

Anyone have experience with this ? Part of me thinks that even with $40 gaskets, I will eventually get leaks...

12-18-2007, 02:42 PM	#1
JohnG Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 105 iTrader: (0)	'69 Firebird 350 -- heads only have 4 bolts for the exhaust manifolds! I bought this car not too long ago, it has a stock motor with exhaust manifolds. Would you believe -- this particular poncho is missing two bolt holes on each head ! The headers have 6 bolt holes per head. I did a little reading on this, and it seems that Pontiac 350's from '68 - '69 did indeed come like this from the factory. I really don't want to swap them out for 400 heads, nor do I want to pull the heads to drill & tap new holes (both of those approaches break my budget at the moment), so I'm thinking of getting a real good set of Copper gaskets & do the install with the 4 bolt mounting. Anyone have experience with this ? Part of me thinks that even with $40 gaskets, I will eventually get leaks...