Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 BBK Long Tube Headers, Throttle Body, and Cold Air Intake

Disassembly starts by disconnecting the battery, removing the stock airbox and hose inlet, and undoing the upper exhaust manifold nuts and studs. With that done, undo the large EGR connections on the passenger-side exhaust manifold. As Mike shows here, this is confined job done largely by braille.

Next remove the stock X-pipe. This requires the usual uncoupling of the oxygen sensors, unbolting the rear slip joints and supporting the rear after-cat section. Here Mike is undoing the manifold to X-pipe flange studs, the last step before the X-pipe drops out.

Unbolt and remove the rear K-member brace. Do your best to keep the nuts and studs together and there is plenty of hardware to remember in this job.

Remove the starter motor. It's absolutely necessary to gain access to the passenger-side exhaust manifold hardware.

Long extensions and swivel sockets are more than just handy for the exhaust manifold studs. Don't worry if the studs screw out with the nuts at the manifold. BBK has you change all the header hardware to bolts anyway.

On the driver side remove the oil filter and disconnect the steering shaft from the rack. Then unbolt and remove the exhaust manifold, and remove all the manifold studs.

Now that the stock exhaust is gone, disconnect the driver-side engine mount and jack the engine up on that side to increase access to the cylinder head area. This is required to gain sufficient working room around the header flange.

Mike uses high-temp silicone to seal the header gaskets at the cylinder head. Install the gasket to the head and partially thread in two header bolts. These bolts must correspond to the slotted holes in the header flange; you'll soon hang the headers from these two bolts.

With the headers in place the tedious job of getting all the header-to-head hardware installed begins. Mike finds it easier to use a ladder to access the top row of bolts rather than lowering and lifting the hoist all the time. In some places it takes one man above the car to guide the bolts while the guy below drives the ratchet. This install is not for first timers.

There's no need to run through every detail of what's in the way of fastening the headers to the engine-that's what the BBK instruction manual is for. Suffice it to say the driver-side engine mount must be removed as shown, and you'll have fun with the dipstick tube, the EGR connection (not so bad, really) on the passenger side, and many of the fasteners go in a 1/16 of a turn at a time while you flip the wrench over.

Swapping over the oxygen sensors and installing the X-pipe is easy, so once the headers are on you're out of the woods. The finished installation is clean and free of any clearance issues.

Like many aftermarket throttle bodies the BBK piece re-uses some of the stock Ford hardware and requires a little bit of set up. One such adjustment is the throttle stop, which is done via a small Allen set screw. The BBK instructions have the full adjustment procedure, which is easy to do but takes too long to explain here.

At one end of the throttle body the TPS is swapped from the stocker to the BBK unit, while at this end the electric motor and associated return spring are swapped. Here the spring is being hooked into the throttle gear.

Here the electric motor and housing have been installed on the BBK throttle body and the spring indexed to the housing. That's simply popping the yellowish spring cap into its matching recesses in the black motor housing.

Taking the throttle body to the car, Mike made the electric hook-ups to the throttle body and checked the voltage. Resetting the voltage requires resetting the throttle stop, which means disassembling the motor section of the throttle body. Only after the voltage checks out within limits is the throttle body bolted to the engine. Mike took two attempts to get this sensitive setting correct, so expect to make a few attempts yourself.

Fitting the remainder of the BBK cold-air intake is simple bolt-on work involving the usual swapping of the mass air electronics to the new aluminum housing and setting up the air filter and heat shield.

As installed the BBK cold-air intake is pretty much a larger mass-air housing and air filter. The stock inlet hose is reused and with no electronic tuning to attend to we were off to the dyno.