Alright. I feel pretty good that I've exhausted all the options here (pun completely intended). I tried every header that from the previous post and they all were all pretty bad. And I can't seem to find anything elsewhere that purports to work and isn't more or less the same design as any of these.
The JBA tubes just came out way too far and almost immediately hit the frame.
The Headman 68618's kicked out too far a bit lower and ended up pointing in the wrong direction by and large.
The Headman 62700 were just wrong in every way possible, as I mentioned before.
So, that left me with the Sanderson BB8 headers. These were by far the closest thing to right. They fit both sides just fine, and dumped out in places that look like they won't cause fitment issues with the rest of the exhaust system. They were a bit tight on the passenger side, but I was able to make a little bit of extra clearance in the frame with the flappy paddle. There's also a potential interference issue with the torque converter dust cover mounting tab, but I think it is manageable is I just have the exhaust guy clock the collector tube flange a different way. If that's not possible then the mounting tab can come off since there's another one near-ish that can be used instead and the whole thing should still be tight.
So, that's it. The headers are sorted.
Driver side
Passenger side
Before clearancing...
After clearancing...
Possible interference...
The other thing I've been working on is the intake. I'm gonna pursue the intake-in-the-cowl approach that I've been thinking about and take a few extra precautions to avoid water issues. The first of them is using an AEM Dryflow pre-filter. Obviously it won't particularly help with a boatload of water, but it should be enough to prevent the random bit of water that makes it down that far from particularly soaking the filter.
The second precaution I'm still kind of sorting out. It will either be a bit of the AEM Dryflow material stuck on the end of a 4" intake mounting bracket placed inside the cowl, which will create both a lip and a bit of a hydrophobic barrier that should keep most of any water out, short of a full on flooding of that space. Or I've been looking at how I could fit a 90* elbow inside the cowl that would point towards the down-slope side, thereby creating both a lip and requiring the water reverse direction in order to enter the intake. An extra bit of the Dryflow material on the end of the elbow would almost guarantee no water would enter. I think both of these would work, but I think for now I'm going to see how the non-elbow solution works.
The week before Thanksgiving should see a lot of work done on the truck. My folks are coming into town and I have the whole week off, so my dad and I should have at least a couple days of solid work. I believe one of the goals will be to get the thing to fire up... but we'll see.
