Last night I bottomed out my 95 LS on one of those country driveways that have a strip of grass running down the center of it. Anyways, so now my car makes this rattling noise from right above my headers, where the o2 sensor is. From what I can tell, it seems like my headers are now hitting my steering rod?(not correct name). It is just barely touching it though, cause it only makes a sound between 1800 - 2200 RPM. I was just wondering if anyone had suggestions on how to bend it back without hurting anything. I mean, will it be ok to just put it on a lift and slowly pry it down just a hair? Thanks

 

It is probably hitting your shift linkage, this happened to me before, kind of. When I installed my old exhaust it was slightly bent from the factory (bad weld), so the header was too close to the linkage and the o2 sensor would hit the linkage and short out. To fix it, I heated up one of my muffler bends and used a prybar to bend it so that it pulled the header/cat/and bpipe away from the linkage.

I think that approach would work for you as well, but then you would have a bent header and a bent exhaust - so I would try this instead: Take the header off of the car - you don't want to try to bend the header while it's on the car because it could probably move around on the head and strip the header bolts, bend the gasket, etc. After taking the header off of the car, see what part is bent, and try to heat up that section and bend it back into place. I am assuming the bend occurred on the a-pipe/collector, so that will be easier to bend - if the runners are bent, you should probably go buy a new header.

You could try putting it on a lift and gently moving it down a bit, but if it doesn't work fairly easily, I would stop before you do permanent damage to anything.

 

yeah, it's a DC ceramic header 4-1.....and it's right above the end of all 4 runners, it would be a bitch to heat up and bend. I'm gonna try hoisting it up tonight and just slowly pulling down on it. My biggest fear though, like you said, is messing up my header bolts or gasket. If that doesn't work, I am gonna try and wrap it with some heat-shield-wrap and just hope it cushions it = no noise.

 

If it's dented or bent that badly, I wouldn't doubt that it is messing up flow quite a bit. I would try your first approach and try to pull it down gently, but if that doesn't work I would buy a new header (those are only about $200 brand new) or take it to a shop that could patch it up for you.

The header wrap may be a good temporary fix if you don't care about the difference in flow due to the dent/bend, but it will probably cause the header to rust in that spot (the DC ceramic coating does not deal well with wrapping) and you will end up replacing it down the road.

 

Thanks a lot for your help
Just hope all goes well with the bend tonight