Years ago there were no store bought headers available for a sbb Apollo. Has anyone developed there own solution by modifying those from an A Body, for example?
run 4 pipes to side fenders and us as portholes. now have 4 ports instead of 3. , dont tell your neighbors. unless you swap out the front unibody chassis with 75-80 x body car, front steer. There is no clearance for headers, I used cast electra and had 2.5 exhaust dual run to back. Gear box is the issue, I moved motor forward to clear box, using GM cast electra 455. Headers by ED custom shop told me 1500$ to build set to clear brakes and box. 455, apollo , craig
I know everyone has different ways of resolving the many issues that arise from modifying or Hot Rodding our Buicks. I do not know about Headers for the 350, however, I do have first-hand knowledge of using A body Headers for the 455 in an Apollo. First, let me state that I moved the motor as close to the firewall as possible. That is to say, I moved the motor back to within about 1/2" of the firewall. This helps in two ways, 1st, it will transfer more weight to the rear of the car for better traction. 2nd, it will give you more clearance away from the rear steer, steering box. The next thing I did was to change the steering box to the smaller Vega style, light weight steering box. I also reduced the thickness of the frame where the steering box mounts. The 455 being wider than a 350, I wanted all the clearance I could obtain. I used two different sets of A body, 455 headers before I fabricated a set of 2-1/8" headers for the Apollo. The first set was the 2" Hooker Headers that loop around the frame in the rear. These worked by extending the pipe that loops around the frame. The passenger side fit with very little effort. The driver side required a little bit of redirecting of the loop as it was extended. They fit very well and I was happy with their performance. I changed because I want to see if there would be an advantage to running the 2-1/8" header. There was an increase in performance. The second set that I fitted to the Apollo, before I made my own, was a set of TA Performance, Stage 2 Headers. I mocked up a set of Stage 2 heads with headers and again, the passenger side fit with no issues. The drivers side was tight and would require very little modifying to install. As most of you know, Tom converted the Apollo to Stage 2 and it runs the Stage 2 Heads and Headers without issue. If I had a 350 Apollo today, I would try the A body headers and look into utilizing a smaller steering box or convert to a rack & pinon style steering. Marv.
