red9four4

i was wondering which headers are better MSDS or Burch?

Ganja Porsche

MSD Requires welding, and that to me means that precision is required, and there is alot of room for 'small' error, and improper tuning. My vote goes to bursch for the simplicity of bolting on and installation and excellent sound.

Dan87951

I would do MSDS, as you know for sure they will fit. Because you can line them up to get a perfect fit then weld them together. With burcsh it's a one size fits all kind of thing, and I don't like that, spells trouble (951 has this problem). I purchased some B&B headers for my 951 not to long ago and one of the key items was making sure they fit correctly, nothing better than you or your mechanic taking the extra few mins to weld them together to insure propar fit.

ThE sPaCeCoWbOy

i have msds headers....and i didnt need to weld anything.....th eplace taht made my exhaust just worked around that...

space

Longtime76

What will replacement headers actually do for your car from a performance aspect. Will they give any real power increase? Also, what do they do with reagards to the exhaust note? I am curious as to whether or not they are a worthwhile investment for a 944S. Who here has made the upgrade for an n/a 944?

Ganja Porsche

Out of all the things I've done to my car, I say the exhaust modification was the best. It's by far one of the best mods for a 944. The power jumps up a good bit, but not near as noticeable unless you go ahead and pay the extra $209 for the testpipe + muffler.
The note changes pretty drastically, everyone I know loves the sound of my car and have me rev it for them at least twice a day. ;-)

Manning

I kind of doubt Bursch or MSDS headers do much of anything for NA 944 or 924S models, though they do sound and look pretty spanky. The manifolds on our cars are pretty well designed to begin with, with nice smooth bends and equal lengths tubes.

MSDS will put a ceramic coating on their headers for a few sawbucks more. They claim it is better (of course) than Jet Hot and actually coat more of the inside of the tubes than Jet Hot does. They claim it is some high zoot FAA approved coating.

instigator

yeh not to metion the cracks that were engineered as well, i think they should have been made out of inconel

ThE sPaCeCoWbOy

i say the headers do give it some power increase....anything with better flow is good...

my set up is this.....msds headers, straight pipe to the turbo muffler....
exhaust note....

LOUD......i mean VERY LOUD.....

i am going to replace from the headers back....going to add a cat.

any ideas?

thanks,
space

Manning

Instigator,

What is the exhaust system made of? Mine shows virtually no corrosion with over 110K miles on it, certainly no red iron oxide at least. I blasted a section of a catalytic converter I have in my garage and after 6 months exposed to the air there is still no corrosion.

Also, I actually have not seen a cracked exhaust manifold on an NA, though I have heard of them on turbos.

I have also heard a few times of the Bursch mild steel headers cracking at weld heat affected zones. Anybody seen this?

Space, are we talking 944 or 951? 944's do need backpressure. I went round and round with Firestarter about that, but in my experience ditching the cat on my car really screwed up the power band, as in where power came on and for how long. My car became very peaky and had good power for only a few hundred rev when I had my cat off.

Longtime76

Manning,
What exactly was the result when you ran w/o a cat, and what was your setup. I am currently running no cat and no muffler on my 87 944S. However, I am thinking sometime I will go with something quieter, as I will be moving to a suburb in the summer after I graduate where the cops have nothing better to do than harass people with loud sports cars, as compared to in Houston where they have many more problems than a loud exhaust to deal with. Anyhow, I like the sound at idle/low rpm's and high rpm's but it is a bit too loud. Also, I feel as if I really have no low end power and torque whatsoever. Could it be that the fact there is relatively zero back presssure be causing this?

ThE sPaCeCoWbOy

i have a n/a...

i agree that n/a's do need some back pressure but if i remember correctly, the original exhaust was like 1.75"....seems small to me....i say increase it to 2" would give it some noticable difference....if your staying n/a

i have a 2.5" but im putting a supercharger on it.....oh and i will be adding a cat back on the car along with some resonators....it definatly needs to be a softer tone...

thanks,
space

Manning

Longtime,

Basically, I was driving along and my original stock cat cracked off at the weld were it joins the down pipe (right at the front of the actual cat). Very loud and very very weird power band. So I say to myself, hey, run a straight pipe until you replace the cat. I had to eventually replace the cat by the way, as I had to pass Ohio's e-check.

Anyway, (I do not recall for sure since this was two years ago and I was kind of distracted by a new relationship after a really bad breakup) I think at the time I was running a Euro Products chip, a K&N panel filter in the stock airbox and a Supertrapp muffler. Thank G-d for the Supertrapp as that is the only thing that even remotely let me get power back to a useable rev range (it's tunable).

So, I cut the cat off completely and replaced it with a 2 and a something inch section of pipe. No leaks at the joint or anything. Power at the low rev range was awful and when it did finally come on it was way up around 4000 rpm and only lasted maybe until about 4700 or 4800 and then started to fall off.

Anyway, I replace the straight pipe with a little tiny cat from Catco (I think) and passed e-check for one and got power back to a very usable range. I now have the following mods to boot:

MSDS cone filter
APE chip (much nicer than Euro Products)
adjustable fuel pressure regulator
all new vacuum lines, fuel lines, pressure damper, seals from the head to the throttle body, and TPS.
Still have the Supertrapp but will be replacing with a stainless cat-back made by Turbo Tim this spring.

I also have no AC and use underdrive pulleys but that is really neither here nor there in this discussion.

I have a stock OE cat in my garage that I plan to put on. I have a really weird feeling that Porsche spent time designing the shape and size of the cat to benefit performance. Kind of like a set of expansion chambers on a two stroke engine. We'll see what happens after I put an OE cat back on.

Space,

I think the internal diameter of the tubing behind the stock cat where the rear flange meets the rear exhaust section is closer to 2" on the one I have im my garage. I'll double check. It is kind of strange how the tubing is necked down where it meets the flange though, so it is actually larger until it get to the flange. Odd.

instigator

Manning , im think the tube type manifolds are stainless (mine are) and they are cracked all the way around the tube (at work and dont know which pair it was on maybe both)but i can tell ya they should have been made of a different material.

i also have the bursch header on the burg car and they are cracked at one of the collectors. time to try an MSDS

Firestarter

Manning,

We really must get together. You should drive my car and see if you think that it is "peaky". It still has the MSDS header, custom pipe and Borla cat back. Most of the power is developed in the range that you mentioned 4000-4700 but I find that it has plenty of power anywhere above 3000 for my tastes. My car also has the the following mods:
MSDS intake,
K&N cone filter,
Adjustable Fuel Pressure Regulator,
Rebuilt Injectors,
blah,
blah,

and nope, I didn't do much if any of this stuff. I was thinking about adding a cat just to quiet the damn thing down a bit. Much too loud for my tastes, but I would rather spend the time engineering a turbo into my engine bay. For those of you that don't know a turbo will also quiet a noisy exhaust.

Firestarter

edited to say... "Oh yeah, it is a euro model too"

Sorry couldn't resist