What I never added was that one of the headers (number 2) was stuck in the engine block and during removal came of off the pipe, with the help of a little corrosion and the brutal efforts of an overzealous amateur mechanic. Anyway because I wanted to use the original round exhaust and the header pipes would not come out of the silencer I decided to try a high temperature chemical weld called JB weld High Heat and was able to carry out a repair losing about 14" off the pipe length.
I then shortened the silencer and painted the header pipes etc etc.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, until the refit anyway. Could I get the BSTRD to fit? No!. I found that I had an alignment problem and no amount of prising heating of pipes etc could shift them. In the end I decided to get the heavy rubber hammer into use with the intention of knocking the F**K out of it until the header came free of the back box. Still wouldn't shift, but after an hour of ugly brute force and a vocabulary that made Goodfella's look like a kids movie, I noticed that I had managed to shift the offending header forward enough to force a fit.
However, JB high heat weld is Tough as duck and has been smashed survived heat from a blowtorch and did not crack or break. Pretty impressive. We will see how it deals with Britains pot hole infested roads. Photo's to follow.
