"I personally don't care for block huggers if you are working the vehicle and driving it much. I had a couple different sets on my 59 Suburban, and could not keep collector gaskets in them. I was running a 350 and pulling a trailer a lot of the time."
Mike,
Why do you suppose the collector gaskets were the weak link and not the gaskets at the heads? And why on short headers but not long tube?
When my now-restored '36 Chevy PU was a sbc powered rat rod in the 1960s I made a set of headers for it copying the Doug's Headers Tri-Y design and had them coated with flame sprayed aluminum. In the head port flange area the aluminum would melt and then solidify again showing that right at the head the headers do get pretty toasty but the collector area? What's up with that?
Even where the flame sprayed aluminum melted no rust ever showed up so the tubing stayed coated enough to prevent rust for the 5 years and about 50K miles it was a daily driver rat rod.
