Good on you for going for it, but I now doubt that your header flange is flat and sealing against the exhaust port anymore, and you probably stretched/bent the studs putting all that leverage on them. Bending the pipe while attached only by those 2 tiny studs was not a good idea. And you started to buckle one of the chambers....
Nobody was really talking bullshit, and now some of the concerns we voiced have actually come true. So, really I think what's happening here is that you're just bad at reading a room and taking advice. "Be humble"