Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Duratec Performance You get what you pay for (header install update)

Exhaustive posts are hard to read but here goes

I had a shop that had done my catback and installed some cross drilled rotors install my headers, they finished today (started Sunday). First of all I called today to check progress and they informed me that they removed the radiator and the alternator?! The later seems to be a problem more on that in a minute. I called again for a progress check and it seems that they could not figure out the MIL eliminators. I instructed the "MECHANIC" based on the instrucitons inlcuded with the MIL eliminators (which i provided to them). Finally they finished and I picked up the car...

There was some smoke eminating from down by the firewall. They told me it was a little oil that was on the piping from their hands caused during the install and that it would go away in 20 minutes. OK I thought

So I am driving along and I start to notice that the interior lights are a bit dim but the headlights seem alright and the car is occasionally surging as I come out of second gear (could be my poor clutch work).

Soon the interior lights are too dim for comfort and I notice erratic almost dying idle, then the tach goes and the car just about dies. I am able to limp it to a parking spot

Current status:

The lights are working but maybe a little dim. The starter just clicks or will give a very weak slight turn of the engine. I am thinking they hooked the alternator up wrong or worse.

I guess feedback would be guesses.

I know in hindsight the shop may not have been the best but they had done simpler work well in the past and they had talked of doing header installs on other modern cars (IE a Maxima) so I though would I would give them a chance.

[censored], tell them what happened, make them pay for the tow and fix. IMO if i ever have a shop work on my car i will be there the whole time watching what they are doing, i dont trust anyone enough to work on my car.

Yea, def. get ahold of the shop and tell them whats up. Ask them who they want to tow it because they may have a deal w/ a local towing co. or have one of their own. But it should be at their expense. But make sure they fix it. If they had trouble with the install, they shouldn't have been doing it. But it is their responsibility to get it fixed by any means.

You don't need to remove either the radiator nor the alternator to install headers. The removal of the radiator might make it a little easier - but definitely not the alternator - oh well. Live and learn!

Also, if you dont nab all the studs on bank 1 you have to drop the alt. to get the manifold out. Happened to me!

For the rear headers you do have to remove all the studs which you can do with a 5mm socket if they don't come out with the nuts as one piece. I always run a tap through each of the threads in the head before I reinstall the header as finding out you have a chewed thread after you just installed 5 out of 6 studs, totally blows!