The manual pitman arm I put on my 74 GTO is curved. It took me a while to find one. The curved arm does not have a "ball joint" in it. the ball joint is on the center link so the pitman arm has a hole in it. I found a Buick Apollo with manual steering, and it had a straight arm, but the ball joint was on the arm, and the center link had the hole. I have not seen a straight pitman arm that just had the hole in it (although that doesn't mean they don't exist!!!!).
As for the header clearance, I had headers (cheap 3 tube headers) on the car when I did the swap originally, and I didn't find much of a difference (it is my understanding that the first gen F body uses the same subframe as the early 70s Venturas). I am running long branch exhaust manifolds now, though.
Importsmasher
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Scott Baggiore
66 GTO convertible 389/4 speed (parents bought new)
73 Firebird Formula 400/4 speed
74 GTO 455/4 speed
74 Grand Am
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