I've had my Fairlane for a few years now but one of the first things I did was to get rid of the stock exhaust to make the thing sound like a V8 instead of an air compressor but I only replaced from the cat's to the rear and that made a heap of difference so I never bothered to get some nice headers.

So a coupla weeks ago I picked up a cheap pair of EFI pacey's for the old girl and got around to fitting 'em up on the w/e.

To do this yourself you'll need the usuall assortment of hand tools and a MIG welder, so not the simplest thing to do at home.
As you can see here:



the output flange of the headers ends up close to where the stock cats outlet is.. So its a bit of cut and shut which is where the MIG or TIG come in.
Other than that it's a fairly straight forward operation..... (Well as straight forward as most mods go anyway )

Now I though the Righthand bank with the steering rack would be the hard side to do but it was piss easy. The only things were the first bolt next to the alt was a s**t to get to cause I was too lazy to pull off the alt but I got it done up anyway. The only other thing was to cut the header flange between No.2 and No3 cyls so it can wrap around the steering gear..



The Left side was the Biatch!!!
To get the stock headers off I had to move the aircon back a few cm so instead of trying to undo the aircon mount bolts I took out 2 bolts of the mounting bracket at the front of the motor and rotated the whole assembly back a bit to get the bolt out. Of course the big fat aircon hose has to be right where you want to stick your hands but the same sockets and spanners used to get the right side on gets this side done as well.



The last thing to do is cut up the cats and re-weld 'em into their new home. Now I've heard some good and bad things about the little gas-gasless MIG's so I got myself one to find out. I've had it a few months now and done a bit welding here and there to get familiar with it which is why I attempted to install these myself.
I've run it in both gas and gasless modes and other than the gas mode making a cleaner weld, it makes a good weld in either mode.
I used the welder in gasless mode to zap up the cats because where I was doing this was way to windy to try and use the shielding gas.

So here's the finished product:



The final report: Of course there's the improvement in power and the overall more responsiveness (I guess you could say) that comes with freeing up the exhaust gasses.
But the thing I like is the change to the exhaust note. It has that nice burble only a windsor makes now !!!
It's just a shame it's a single system as the best sounding cars I've owned (ZA fairlane, XW wagon) both with windsors, had twin systems.
I've got a spare donk that I'm rebuilding as a 347 stroker and when thats done I'll convert the car to straight gas and pull the petrol tank and wheel well and mount a pair of gas tanks in their place, THEN there's no problem with putting in a nice twin system.

Weve got a gas/gasless 215 wia mig welder, and it is FAR better on gas normally. Much better penetration, less spitting, much tidier. Just better overall! Looks good but, and nice job

No you know how to do it, you can come and do mine
Sounds like a pig of a job !!!

Your very keen. Nice job. I dont think i could bring myself to even attempt it..

By the way, i think you might have a few oil leaks to check out lol

Great effort doing the install yourself!
Im very impressed as i dount think id have the patience or skill to carry that off lol..

Being stock cats, how many kms the done and how they holding up; mine are going out the window i think as they smell sometimes.. yuk.

Yes twin system all the way; cant get better than that!

This where the 20/20 hindsight comes in. The things have done 180K and are probably rooted so I'm gonna have to get a new pair of cats as the stockies I/O's are a lot smaller than the header flange also. But I'll get back to that in a few weeks

And on the Oil leak, It's been leaking for a while and I cleaned and checked it and it looked to be the rear main seal And the last time I had to do a trans I had access to a hoist. So I was putting it off until I had the 347 stroker done but while I was fitting the headers I found a split in the sump gasket right up the back at the trans. The leak ran down the trans coverplate so it looked like it was coming from the rear main.
A good smearing of silicon sealer has fixed that and no pulling out transmissions.

what are you doing with the old manifolds??

The first thing I thought of was "BOAT ANCHOR" when I had a look here:


That has to be the worst thing Ford ever did to the V8.
I recon the old cast iron headers would do a better job than those things..

I had a thought of cutting and grinding them up and turning them into a set of turbo manifolds but heat and space are the big killers on that idea. I think I'll go with a supercharger.
I guess I should ask what you might want these paper weights for???

i cant believe you cut the header flange between cylinders 2 and 3 to get it pass the steering arm
the correct way of fitting headers on the r/h side is to remove the steering shaft first

i`m building a XL sedan delivery van with a 302 and blow through turbo system.
so how much do you want for them?

hey gravelrash i have a set of extractors you can have for free as long you pay for freight

Yeah I know..
But the pacemaker instruction sheet that came with 'em told me to do just that!!

Same as 'xr8man' they're free if you wanna pay post, as I have a second set from the 302 I'm rebuilding anyway.

did they really
thats a supprise
i fitted some ceramic coated stainless steel extractors to my eb xr8
dont know exactly what they were off but they fitted really nice
must post some pics on here oneday

Nice work with the extractors,looks good.Someday soon will be giving mine ago on my fairlane.