It's simple if all your manifold studs come out without breaking.
I had 8 out of the 12 snap off.
I don't know what else you can do prior to undoing them other than giving them a good tap. You can't get any fluid at them and heating them up did nothing for me.
Good luck though, sometimes they all come straight out.
-------
Yup, good point, I have already had both of my manifolds off of the car so to hollow them out and then to ceramic coat them. That’s one of mine shown in my earlier posting (I had them coated gold since I thought that it was a nice break from the standard black or silver).
Even though all 12 of my bolts thankfully came right out of the heads without a care, nevertheless I will be replacing these bolts with short studs and flange nuts the next time that I am poking around under there, just so to protect the aluminum threads in the head from the potential for wear / damage due to frequent removal.
------
Why would you want to put that standard non cat manifold on the car? Those are standard across the range in UK and Europe and even the cheap and simple aftermarket £100 eBay manifolds work much better.
------
That’s certainly a fair and obvious question.
Several reasons:
a) I like the general philosophical approach of returning a USA-spec car to its original unencumbered Euro-spec status, using as many OEM parts as can reasonably be done. And the OEM Euro-spec manifolds are plentiful and cheap over here in the States as they were used on our earlier 2.5 / 2.7 engines.
b) I’ve heard various anecdotal stories of some of the cheap and cheerful Chinese eBay headers not fitting so well. Seems like their use could become a bit of a roll of the dice, depending upon which flavour I just happen to receive this week.
c) Aside from the potential for fitment issues, I don’t like the way that these headers splay out and away from the block. See marked-up picture. Again, I’ve heard second-hand stories about how various components which are located beyond the heads can get cooked by these protruding header tubes, especially after the car is shut down and stationary after a long run.
d) It looks as if there could perhaps be some interference between the headers and the various undercar cover trays, as shown in the picture? Maybe, maybe not. But even so, they do seem to end up much closer than the OEM set-up, and I don’t want to modify or to cut these panels.
So, all in all, recognizing that the headers would appear to flow better than the Euro-spec manifolds, I would be willing to compromise so to accept the more compact design of the Euro manifolds.
Thanks - DM
