I seemed to have lost one of my header bolts (ARP) after 10 years. The driver side rear most bolt. I am thinking of going with a Stage 8 kit. Anyone ever use them? I have MT headers and I don't know if the center bolt retainer would be able to contact anything to "lock" it. Thanks.
Header bolts don't need to be mechanically "locked". Even chemical locking is often unneeded. The problem is not so much the bolts actually loosening, as it is with the header gasket crushing, or the cheap-junk thin steel header flange bending. Better gaskets, thicker flanges, and a hot-retorque generally fix header bolt "loosening".
I haven't used SCE Copper header gaskets, but I've heard good things about them. How thick is the header flange?
I am using the plain old TA header gaskets. When they were new, I found I had to tighten them for 3 or 4 heat cycles. I would find several loose. After that, they remained tight. I check them every so often, but they remain tight.
For what it’s worth … I used Remflex gaskets and regular header bolts. Although I only had a few hundred miles on them (mostly an accumulation of very short trips), I never re-tightened the bolts and never had a problem.
Do yourself a favor and check the rear bolts frequently. I had headers and remflex's and both sides the rear bolt would continue to need tightening for quite some time. The middle and front bolts weee always fine. Go figure.
