I did leave the pipes loose on the heads, still no fun.

I got them for $500 shipped from Mazzolini so they're not expensive and they will be pretty easy to work with now. I personally do not recommend cutting off the 3-bolt exhaust flanges, I rotated mine and rewelded them so they don't face the ground but I used to collector reducers that come with the headers to make tools to remove/install the collectors. We welded steel plate to the end of them with a nut in the center, that way I can bolt them to my collectors to tap them on w/o hurting the flange on the collectos and I can attach a small slide hammer to the nut to remove the collectors when necessary. I CANNOT imagine getting these collectors off w/o the 3-bolt flanges.

I also added a couple more L shaped tabs to bolt the collectors to the pipes. The number 8 pipe barely slides in far enough.