Did you ever have an ORP marry itself to a set of headers?

We have a BBK H-pipe that ran on one set of shorties for a year or so, and now we are using the same H-pipe on a new set of headers, but they don't want to seal against the ball on the collector.

Have you ever had this happen?

I figure that it conformed the socket to the set of headers it was on before, and now it is biased and doesn't want to seal against the new ones.

If you have had this happen, how did you work it out?

The new set of headers are higher quality stainless steel, and look to me to have a slightly shallower ball connection. I suppose if that is true, the sockets on the H were stretched a bit, and the shorter ball connection cannot fill it out now.

After goofing with it for a while, we finally got the left side sealed, but the right side just won't cooperate.

These are Summit brand, but appear to be high quality.
We did not check the angle of the balls to the other set, which were also Summit brand, but the dirt cheap versions in thin mild steel and with crappy welds. This set is very nice, but being generic may have a similar issue...

How did your eBay set look as far as quality?

Okay, so we got it resolved.

The new headers, while very nice stainless steel, did have one flaw, the ball portion of the collector (for the ball and socket connection) was shallower than other headers, and they were also not very straight.

In order to get the BBK H-pipe to fit, after it had been mated to a set of headers with a better collector ball, we had to take a pair of pliers and bend the entire socket portion of the pipe over, so they would allow the shallow ball connections to sit further into the socket. I just bent the entire lip, all the way around the pipe, outwards about 1/8" or so.

Even though the left side eventually sealed, as noted in my original post, we ended up pulling it down and doing the same mod to it. I am glad we did too, because we could see the exhuast was just barely contained, and probably would have started leaking before long anyway. Better to get it sealed more permanently now while it was in the shop.

Really, with everything else on these headers being so 'right', they could have built the collectors so much better.