I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who used to build muscle cars back in the day and he swears up and down about using manifolds. He keeps telling me about running headers and how I'll blow gaskets left and right. Right now I've got a set of Hooker headers on my 74 with sealing copper gaskets. I'm just wondering if anyone's ever blown their copper gaskets or how often they've had to replace gaskets with their headers.

The main reason I ask this is because the guy knows his stuff and can assemble an engine in his sleep pretty much. He's surprised me a couple of times with things that's he known while we've been working on cars, boats, etc. I've heard nothing but good things about headers so with him telling me something like this it makes me double think what I've read and been told.

I just wanted to hear some other people's opinions and see what you guys had to say.

 

If you're after any kind of performance gains, you certainly don't want to use stock manifolds.
Cheap headers + cheap gaskets = possible blow out. If your copper gaskets are holding, keep them. I like Percy's Seal-4-Good gaskets though. They are a soft laminated type that compresses and compensates for surface irregularities.

 

Why does he think you will blow a gasket? are you doing any performance to it? If so then you would have to upgrade them.

 

I think the main reason he's thinking I'll blow a gasket is because when he used to do the big muscle car thing was before metallic gaskets and stuff like that (tells you how old he is). He mostly works on marine engines now and since the early 80's that's been the majority of his work. Most of the automotive work he does now is just basically stock engine stuff that doesn't call for performance modifications and so forth. So a lot of the newer stuff for performance he hasn't had to mess with so he doesn't know it's out there. I think this is why he thinks I'll blow a header gasket is because he used to make 600+ hp dragsters back in the day and would blow gaskets left and right. Plus he talks about how the heat kills the headers and the manifolds are thicker, yadda, yadda, yadda.