HappyTrails

I bought part 101212 from ATP Automotive Graywerks. Looks sturdy and welded nicely. Went on with no trouble and matched the exhaust pipe with no fuss.

Intake manifold needed a bit of grinding. This came as no surprise from all the posts on installing an upgraded manifold. But no big deal. Got out the grinder and took some material off the sides of the runners where they have to fit between the manifold tubes. I think its more of an issue of sloppy intake manifold casting than it is with new exhaust manifold being made off spec. Fix was expected and easy enough. Just fit check both parts together on a flat work table before fitting up to engine. Trace the gasket and bolt holes and hold the parts over the trace to determine any clearance grinding necessary to get the holes to line up with the trace.



Old parts come off easy.

Bleepinjeep.com has a good Youtube on this project. But one point he missed was on removing the power steering pump. Use the holes in the pulley with a deep well socket to remove the three pump mounting bolts. No need to work an open end wrench behind the pulley like he does. He shows you the hard way. Do it the easy way through the pulley holes.



Obvious crack in the old manifold.




Second cracked area in old manifold




While you are in this deep, change the Crank Position Sensor. It is easy and right there. If you don't, one day you will wish you had.





Intake valves clean as a whistle.




Clean up the intake manifold and injector faces while you are at it. Mine was in pretty good shape and took very little work. As you can see, leave the injectors and fuel rail on the manifold for this project. Just unplug all the stuff.



Muffler guy once said tack welding the bolts to the flange makes installation a breeze. So I did.




Fits right on! AND check your motor mount bracket-to-engine bolts if they have not been upgraded. Read the threads on this failure point. You are in this deep. Get the work done now the easy way.


Now if it looks like I used some gasket cement, don't be confused. Its not. I used high temp axle grease! Yes, I know this will leave Jeep people shaking their heads. But back in my British car days, we used this routinely on the manifold gaskets. Reasoning was it added additional sealing performance (probably a commentary on the quality of the gaskets of the day), and made them reusable, since we were frequently removing and swapping manifolds tinkering with different components and configurations. Both reasons are probably totally irrelevant in this case, but old habits die hard.

Only time consuming part was getting to the lower bolt behind #4 tube. The different tube routing leaves no you way to get a wrench on the bolt from the side. Did some of the bolt turning from under the vehicle with a fancy box wrench extension set up. Then I had to reach from the top and front and behind the tubes to get a ratcheting box wrench on the bolt head for final tightening. A better solution would be to use a hex key bolt. I think there is just enough clearance to get an allen key past the tube from the side.

Tools used:

The usual stuff.

Ratchet Box Wrenches. Essential to reach the obstructed lower 9/16" bolt behind #4 tube.

Extra long box wrench set to bolt to the ratchet box wrench (a trick box wrench extension technique) to reach that nasty bolt behind #4 from under the vehicle.

Air ratchet

Blow gun

Angle Grinder

Welder

Hope this helps someone looking at this project.

WyoCherokee

Nice write-up. seems like a good header, how much did it run you? only thing you might do is post a pic of where you had to grind on the intake.

DEN1956

excellent!!

GregB58

Nice.
I installed the same header, with a Walker down pipe, Magnaflow cat and a Dynomax cat back system. I say "I" installed it when I rally mean my son and one of his friends since I don't weld. It all went together nicely though I don't have any pics.

HappyTrails

I thought of that too, but too late to do it. Sorry about that. I have read so many reports of mis-fit that I just went at it with the grinder and probably removed more than just necessary. Also I chamered the dowel holes a bit and took some material off the "heels" of the bolt tabs to allow the thing to swing up into position a bit easier. A bit detailed to show in photos, but I hope this description helps out for someone.

HappyTrails

Good to hear. The downpipe is the next leg of the journey for me. I did pull mine off a while back and took out the factory dent with lots of heat and prying.

HappyTrails

I paid 180. Included shipping and gaskets. Bought it direct from ATP Automotive Graywerks. Also known as Automotive Parts Network. Its all ChiCom stuff though.

Steve5280

I came across this just in time for the my issue with my ATP header. Hopefully I can successfully revive this old thread and get some advice. First, the flange is slightly warped. It's less than 1/16th out at #2 and hopefully will be ok but I had them send me another anyway. If the new one is better than great, the first one gets sent back or vise versa. Anyway, second problem is that the exhaust flange is about 1/8" thicker than the intake manifold tabs. This makes it impossible to tighten the dome washers and bolts down properly. Thoughts? Should I grind down the exhaust header bolt tabs too? Oh yeah, 98 Cherokee Sport 4.0L.