Hey all! Hope somebody can shed some light here. I have a 73 T-Top Vette small block/auto. We took the engine and transmission out to repair all the leaks. Also removed the old rusty headers and side pipes and bought new ones. Hookers. Ceramic coated.

We have the engine and transmission back in. The problem lies in the new headers/sidepipes. On the driver's side, they sit about 1.5 inches away from the car. (the side pipe is just test fitted at the moment) On the passenger side, the header is right up against the car. Not even going to put the side pipe on that side until we figure out how to get the header away from the car. The header needs to come out and down.

Of course, nobody paid any attention to how the old ones fit!

How are they "supposed" to fit along side of the car? The way they are now can't be right.

What can we do?

Thanks in advance!

Not to assume anything, is the motor setting on the mounts correctly? It sounds like there is a misalignment between the headers and the car. If you still have the old headers I would match them up to see if they are different.

Hope I don't have the same problem! Found bad motor mounts during my engine swap. New motor going in next week with hooker headers.

Thanks for the reply, Brian. New motor and transmission mounts. All seems to be well. Talked to someone that has installed a lot of these Hooker Comps on Vettes and he said it's not unusal. Some fit good, some not so good. Different sets on the same car will fit differently. Just the nature of the beasts. Everything is moved over to the right on the mounts as far as we can get it. I think we are going to take that one header in and have it bent out a tad.

Instead of trying to slide the motor to the right, how about rotating it? I mean lift the pass side and lower the drivers side on the mounts. Joe

Just to be sure, I'd check the clearance between the bellhousing and body trans tunnel. Is it equally spaced, if not, it could tip you off to a misalignment of motor or trans mount. The rockers needed to be cut to allow enough clearance for mine to fit. One side needed to be cut more than the other. Are you measuring with the muffler tubes in place? If not, you might try slipping them on and check for fit.

Our C3's all vary. What I mean is some parts fit other C3's better then others. Some of this is just variance from GM vs what the aftermarket built their parts to. I seriously doubt that you need to move the engine around too much.

However that being said. I have spoke to the hooker Tech department and their has been cases where aftermarket motor mounts can raise or change the mounting points of an engine to cause some of their headers not to fit.

My recommendation would be to call them and tell them what is going on. They have a design packet on each header and should be able to give you some dimensions to check and varify where against their original design.