Doug's Headers A453 in 70 Duster with 4 Speed my experience

I know there's already posts about the Doug's Headers install, but thought I'd share some of my experiences to help others.

I am swapping my old beat up rusted, scraped, banged up flowtechs headers(came with the Duster) for some Model D453 Doug's headers. 1970 Duster with A833 4 speed manual and 318 engine, manual steering.

Not a quick job so this will take some time. This post Doug's headers fittment
helped me so thanks...but I'll add a bit more to hopefully help the next person.

Get the car up about 2 feet or more, You'll need the big jack stands (the bigger 6 ton ones worked nicely for me). The higher up you get the car the easier the task gets.

I pulled both torsion bars which was quite easy. I backed out the adjusters until they were loose, I simply removed the lower control arm bolt (follow the torsion bar socket through the k member) and loosened the strut bar nut. This will give you leverage to push the lower control arm back and push the torsion bar with it. Then I used vicegrips to hold the back of the torsion bar hex (so it didn't go back into the subframe socket) and when you move the a-arm towards the front of the car (the front part of torsion bar hex will come out of the a-arm socket) another vice grip to hold that area then one more push back with the a-arm and out came the torsion bar.

Remove manual steering linkage, remove oil filter. I already had headers so I was already using the shorter PH43 oil filter if you had manifolds and the long filter you will now need a shorter oil filter or 90 degree adapter.
Next - remove clutch pedal z-bar, remove starter (my car had the original big mamma starter which won't work with the Doug's headers (need the mini starter aka certain 90's v8 Dakota, ram truck starter).

Passenger side header came out easy, drivers side required me to unbolt the drivers motor mount and lift the engine about an inch or a bit more than an inch (watch your distributor for clearance when you're jacking up the engine - mine had enough room, but your's may not). Then the drivers side header came out. For the dougs to fit (they hug the motor more than the old Flowtechs), I had to trim off the horns that stick off the side of my A833 transmission. I took off about 1/2" each side (they don't serve any purpose that I know off anyways).
You could get by with trimming less, but a bit more clearance is better in my mind.

The Doug's have plenty of room to get the mini starter in after you bolt up the headers so don't worry about that (Doug's instructions say it needs to be installed simultaneously - not true). I will put some heat resistant sheathing over the starter wires as they're a bit close to some of the header just to be sure I don't melt them down.

Next Task Z-bar modification. The link above and on TTI's page I believe show how to modify the Z-bar for their headers (and the Doug's) to work. Their fix requires cutting and rewelding the z-bar, I didn't feel like that was absolutely necessary so I grabbed a vice and a bit of heat (just a cheap propane torch for soldering copper pipe) and put two bends into the z bar. No matter what you do to that z-bar the area around the z-bar linkage is super tight with the headers being there and a starter. So you may need to do a bit of trial and error to get it to fit well.

I'm at the point of putting my torsion bars back and bolting up the steering linkage, but my torsion bars appear to interfere with the headers (on both sides). I'll have to put a little bit of clearance into the new headers for them to work (and I still have the stock /6 torsion bars my car was originally a /6 car now converted to v8). I'm a bit surprised they couldn't design that clearance into the headers.

Almost done, luckily my car has been apart not so long ago so all bolts and parts came apart easy, if you have rusty/crusty parts your fight will be longer. Hope this helps someone.