If I'm getting you right Dave sounds like you want to do what we used to call Tri-Y headers. Good for torque, best for street, somewhat easier to route, and typically reduce exhaust noise (which may or may not be an advantage with your side pipe setup depending on how much noise you want)

Here's one article that deals with Tri-y's; http://superchevy.com/technical/engi...r/index1.html. As they mentioned, Doug Thorley loves these things so you might get some info from his site, or a conversation. I did a quick Google and there're some other articles discussing this design you may want to sift through.