[jhandy]

I am sorry for your loss. I hope that you do a post mortem on your car, because I was about to do the same modifications with headers and such to my car.
My thoughts are that the steel or alloy that the "made in china" headers are made from may get red hot, burn the surrounding plastic parts and cause a fire. Also some of the heat shielding may have been removed or damaged from the install.
Whatever the case, I think I will stick with stock headers for now and wait to see how this turn out.
I really think that this is too much of a coincidence that after working on the hottest part of the car it catches fire.
I would keep my mouth closed about any modifications to the car. Surely somewhere in your insurance policy it will state that this will void your coverage.

Good Luck and keep us posted.

James