Purchased a 1966 396-375 engine without exhaust manifolds or headers. Plan to install in a 69 camaro. Will any big block manifold from 1965-69 work? Non A.C. or P.S. car. Thank's in advance.

I'd guess it depends on the exhaust you plan to run (fabbed vs. a kit). If you want to use a kit that is setup for Camaro, you need Camaro manifolds. If you're having something fabbed and don't mind having to try to figure out the bends necessary, something else might work.

The 1st gen bb manifolds are specific to these cars, and have a pretty good sized relief cast into the driver side to clear a power steering box. The common casting number ends in 879 for driver, 178 for passenger, and those are the numbers reproduced. Seems to me there's another set of castings that will work, but i don't have the numbers.

More discussion and pictures in this thread.
http://www.camaros.net/forums/showthread.php?t=79557&highlight=879

Thank's Eric for your insight. The car has the chambered exhaust in it now but was cut at the collector to allow for large headers. I guess what I am saying is that I will have to fabricate a short piece to tie the manifolds into the exhaust collector anyways so a non camaro manifold would probably work.? The car is a 4 spd and I could not hookup the reverse lockout properly with the headers. Sorry so long. Thank's TC.

Do you need the lockout, or just want to go back stock? A lot of us just have the steering column fixed like the lockout was there. (it's a little hard to run the lockout with a TKO ;) )

I would like the lockout to work as it did originally. I have a big block in the car now that has the headers. I am putting the 396 in now and need to purchase manifolds for it. The 396 has oval port heads and was dyno'd at 377 h.p. Just am not sure what to buy.

Well, the repro 879 and 178 manifolds fit fine, and they are usually cheaper than finding a good, non-warped, unbroken pair of originals. The repros only come with one date code, and I have seen good originals go for twice as much as repros, depending on the date.