Tired of seeing her sit on the hoist!

Heres a little story about my baby. I bought my 78 TA 10 years ago becoming her 3rd proud owner. Its clean, all original down to the spare tire. The motor had 71 heads, cam, intake, Q-Jet, manifolds, carb, and exaust changed out. It sat garaged about 7 years. Got 26 mpg driving home. Yeah blew my mind too. All original parts came home with, me even the ac still worked. Burned alot of rubber with it and thought i should freshen the motor back up. I upgraded a few things, pistons, MSD ignition, and valves. Got fed up with the pinging or retardation (depending on how i was gonna drive that day) and against others opinions, ordered Hooker headers with Flowmasters cat back exaust. HOLY SHI- did that wake the old girl up. Balls to the wall! I thought, now all it needs is a footprint gas pedal installed:lol2: ! Now heres the Huge downside to that. Pain in the ash. Would'nt be so bad if there was actually room to get to the bolts when retightening. Heres what you've been waiting for. WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO SOLVE MY PROBLEM? Special tool, bolts, or adhesive perhaps? Hate leaks and repeating unnecessary procedures. Thanks.

Welcome to AF, nice ride, but what bolts, the headers? If so, modern high quality gaskets with special locking header bolts available from ARP and others should cure the problem.

Several times I have modified an open- end wrench for header use. Get the torch, BFH and grinder out and start reshaping that wrench to get to the hard-to-reach bolts.

There are only two header bolts on the Pontiac that are real difficult. The 4th one back on each side. The rest can be easily tightened/loosened with either a long extension and "wobbly" socket or a wrench.

You won't like it, but the easiest way to get to those two, would be to remove the starter (driver's side) and attack it from behind the header, and the oil filter housing on the other side, in the same manner. The Craftsman "ignition" wrench is ideal for this. Remove the motor mount pin and jack the engine up a bit while working on either side. Use a block of wood or other "stop" to keep the engine from "falling" back while your hand is up in there...

Use Felpro Performance part number 1424 header gasket. The ARP self-locking bolts described WORK. The ones that fit a small block Chevy are the correct ones for the Pontiac.

Jim