Woe is My Exhaust

Surprisingly, the soda can exhaust patch job on the driver's side header dramatically lowered the volume and intensity of the explosive hot gas leak.  Success!  This achievement made it possible to enjoy for the first time a tremendously loud racket coming from the other side of the engine compartment.  Feeling brave, I abandoned my post at the ignition switch and walked around the front of the truck to find somewhat of a small mystery.  The engine sounded like it was running without a muffler, but the header was clearly attached and there were no obvious holes as on the other side.  I shut it down and did some feeling around after everything cooled off to find that there were large holes in each header pipe on the engine side where they were hidden from view.  I sat back and made the easy decision to scrap and replace them.

Replacing exhaust components on a modified vehicle can be tricky since they are usually manufactured to fit specific vehicle configurations.  So, I set about the task of "looking at them really well" to improve my chances of buying the right ones online later.  I had mixed feelings about what I observed:

The exhaust headers are literally touching everything except the starter on their way down the side of the engine.  The heat transfer to the steering gearbox housing is likely the cause of the massive leak coming out of that thing.  Oh, by the way, there is a massive power steering fluid leak coming out of the input shaft of the steering gearbox.  The good news is that it makes the decision to pull the existing headers even easier.  The bad news is that I now have to find a very specific set of pipes that will fit in there better than the old ones.  ...and I need a new steering gearbox.