slate blue

Hi to all I thought I would share my header making experience with you all, I think it is a pretty frustrating job in reality. I regarding this job as a once in a lifetime affair. One that I can say yeah "I made a set of custom equal length headers".

I decided to make them out of stainless 304 although the merge collectors are made from 321, I have only tacked them together at the moment so please excuse the unfinished look, I am going to get them tigged together and have them back purged while that process is taking place.

The headers are 28 inches long and made from 1 3/4" pipe, I am also order a set of stainless flanges, the existing ones are horrible and don't fit properly when separated and are made from mild steel. I have some trouble tacking the stainless to the mild steel with the 316 wire but in the end it doesn't matter as I will wait until I get my stainless flanges before I tackle the other side.

One thing about making these equal length (within 1/4 inch) the amount of mandrels you use is quite incredible, I thought I had bought enough for both sides, I used almost all I had on one side. Hope you like the pics.

NickT

Impressive, very impressive indeed!!

hacker-pschorr

Wow!

WH928

thats just ammazing, impessive, awsome did you bend the elbows or were they purcaced etier way you are craftsman

DANdeMAN

WOW... This is some nice work indeed!!!

glack

As has already been said.....

....and which I'd like to reiterate....

....that is amazingly impressive.

Garth S

Great stuff! - now for the stupid question . Do you have an engine in a chassis that guided your cut & paste of the mandrel bends? - so it will fit without contact within the range of movement allowed by the motor mounts.
BTW, after this work, it will be mere childs play for you to bang out a few sets of 'X - pipes' ..... sign me up for one please .

slate blue

The elbows are purchased pre bent in many different degrees, 15, 30, 45, 70, 75, 90, and 180 degrees. They are mandrel bent and as such that is very a specialist job. Thanks for comments.

Hi Garth I unfornately own two almost identical 928s, both fully restored Euros, wanna buy one? So I took the exhaust manifold off the going car, yes now 2 non going 928s! and then trial fitted the header.

As for fitment, I will refit to ensure clearance as things are tight in there! Also things change such as with engine mounts sagging, I do have some clearance in that case and I also have Carl's mounts. Those mounts are fitted to my trial fit car. I'm hoping the solid mounts wont sag too much, the original sag by over 10 mm. Generallt I have given myself about 20 to 25 mm clearance everywhere.

Also if you notice the primaries run close to the block, I did it this way on my passenger side as I hope to copy this and repeat it on the drivers side. That is where the real drama is with the steering column.

Here another photo that shows how they tuck in.



Being stainless they shouldn't transmit so much heat into the engine bay but I think I will still get them coated to be on the safe side. Anybody have any thoughts on coating stainless?

Also I just pulled them apart to further prepare them i.e sand down the tack welds and ready them for the tig. One thing that might really seem funny is that it is really hard to measure them accuarately. Now that I have them apart making it easier to measure I find that I have 1/2 inch difference and not a 1/4. I don't think this should make a big difference, anyway I cant do them any better due space and time constraints.

Yes as to an X pipe, that is coming and so is the variable back pressure exhaust valve, the system goes into 2.5 inch till after the X pipe and then into dual 3 inch, I have gutted my GT mufflers and rear S muffler repiping them in 3 inch. Can't wait to hear wait it sounds like. Thanks to all who posted coments makes a week of sweating away in the garage more tolerable, it have been 35 to 40 degrees C here.

Cheers Greg

John Veninger

Very nice work!

Peter F

That is one piece of art Greg
Good luck with the other side.
It might be a little trickier with the steering column as you said.

Cheers/Peter

Herr-Kuhn

Nice work...all that is missing are the hair dryers (turbos In terms of your coating...go with Swain's White Lightning. Anything else is just spray and bake high temp paint and won't last. I just had my manifolds, turbine housings and downpipes done up with the White Lightning...it wasn't cheap but the stuff is awesome. There are some pictures a few pages back.

www.swaintech.com

Herr-Kuhn

For a minute there I thought that was the steering side of the car...now I see this is a right hand driver. We can all blame the British for that!

Yes, fitting it all on the steering side is tough...but you can do it.

tv

Very Nice job. They do look like art. My question is what did you do to your cam covers? Is there a finish on them? And maybe its just the pic but it loos like the angle of the flange is to acute to meet the exhaust pipe flange.

MarkRobinson

Beautiful! & will work with my turbo kit too!

Ketchmi

Once again John, you are mistaken. The coating we use on our X-overs is guarenteed to last at 1600 degrees and is ceramic based. They also have one for 2000 degrees. Baked on high temp paint? Get a clue. HPC is one of the first in the business and they have everything from internal engine coatings to exhaust coatings that are guarenteed for life.

I'm starting to think you have a turbo attached to both ends, to speed up the hot air that you expel. This thread has nothing to do with turbos. You don't realize that it's turning into a joke and people are not laughing with you...

http://www.hpcoatings.com/motorsports.htm

Anyway Greg, if you would like to get them coated HPC is just a few miles down the road from us and we will be glad to help you out with the process. They kinda' like us down there. The coating is supposed to keep most of the heat in the pipe and reduce the underhood temps considerably. They also claim up to a 3% horsepower gain but I have not verified this by dyno yet.