? for anyone w/ a 250 2V head

[ponyboy14]

Okay so I did a search on this and couldn't find anything. I just rebuilt a 200 and put a OZ 250 2v head on with headers from Mike. I have driven the car about 300-500 miles and already blew the header gasket. No I didn't keep retightening the header bolts like I should have, I just never thought about it. My question is how in the hell do you keep retightening the bolts daily and weekly without removing the intake and starter everytime? I just can't get at all the bolts as good as I would like too. There is just no room. If anyone has figured out an ingenious solution to this problem please let me know.

Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

Allen headed fasteners, ball ended allen wrenches / sockets, universal joints, and flex head ratchets... and a little creativity too. Makes the job 10x quicker.

 

[chandler]

I bought the locking header bolts when I installed my headers and havent had to retighten my bolts yet in a year and like 3-4000 miles

 

[addo]

From the factory, they were fitted with locking tabwashers. You bent the fingers of the washers over adjacent surfaces after torquing. Usually, there were enough tabs on the washer to get a couple of "goes" from each piece.

Really, the questions have to be asked - was the gasket face flat and true, and are the headers able to be torqued down evenly to start with?

Regards, Adam.

 

[ponyboy14]

Yes, I had the head plained, and I actually had to build out the center two ports a little bit. But after I blew the gasket, I went to check on the bolts and the bottoms ones were all loose. I put my headers on after the engine was already in the car, I guess it is possible that my headers could be twisted a little bit inside the engine bay, and were not all the way flush. Can I get those locking header bolts at any auto store or do I order through Mike?

Thanks

 

[CobraSix]

Mike's are nice, the self inner locking ones from what I've read.

I used ARP Header studs/bolts/lock washers. The studs are nice and hold torque so far over 6k miles. I'm going to have to remove the headers soon for some minor work on the exhaust ports, so I'll see what I'm going to do then.

Slade