Hey y'all. Recently I installed a Hedman street header (#48030) on my wagon's 2.3 and had a new exhaust system built all the way back. I would have to torque the bolts down again after every heat cycle for about a week, which i decided was more or less normal. I finally got them to pretty much stay tight, but couldn't figure out why it was still noisy and leaked at the head.

I ended up pulling the header and checking it out. You know the tiny little ports for the thermactor air injection or EGR or some such crap that are beneath the exhaust ports (see pic)? Well, the header flange hides but doesn't seal those at the head, and only fully mates up with the head just around the main ports. So basically each cylinder has a pea-sized hole for exhaust to shoot out.

Not my head, but an example I found online:



Anybody else ever run into this? Any solutions aside from different head/header or... *gulp* drilling/tapping these holes for plugs? I appreciate any insight...