[olddog]

I had a local machine shop make the plates. I provided the pattern (drawing) for the holes and sizes. No recall of how long it took them to get the plates to me, but seems like maybe a week.

I had to clean off ceramic coatings, before welding. Also cut off the tabs and grind. Seems like a few hours.

My son welded the plates on for me. Tacking them and installing and aligning everything, then tacking the other plate took the longest. Seemed like 3 hrs.

Then disassemble and weld it, a couple more hours.

I started out thinking I could file the plates flat. I wasted a couple hours. Well, I had it pretty good, but I am obsessive. So I took them into work and used the belt sander to get them looking professional.

I sanded everything I could reach, but could not clean all the plates. They were shinny clean when starting but the welding discolored and there is slag and what not. I likely spent 2-4 hours on that.

I then soaked the plates in a weak acid, being careful not to dip them up to the ceramic coating. They soaked a day or so. Once they were shiny all over from the acid I neutralized the acid and applied a ceramic paint. Another day for the paint to dry.

Put them on and then followed the paint instructions on heat cycling to cure the ceramic paint.

All in all I think I spent a couple weeks on it.

I also did some other things. I changed to studs in the head to hold the headers on. I had to custom grind many of the washers so they hit flat on the header, as the original welds that connect the flange to the pipes was too close to some of the bolt holes. I didn't want to grind the welds flat, as they are ceramic coated. So, I opted to remove metal from the washers to make everything fit properly.