MitchB

Surfin' around E bay, I saw a few sets of new 951 headers from a company called L'ONZA. I'm in the market since my exhaust manifold is going to need replacing due to a leak, and the salvage prices hover around $500.00 a set.

Anybody heard of these guys? Don't have to have a bump in HP (I've heard the stockers are pretty efficient...), but the have to last...

Thx
M

Sam Lin

I've been curious about those also, I'm interested in any info that comes up.

From my observation they look nice, but the pipe merges seem to be pretty amateur with little thought toward internal flow. That's a totally uneducated guess - as I said, I'm curious about them also.

Sam

TonyG

Do you have a link?

TonyG

Sach951

SFR sells stock replacement headers as well. Tim's fabrication work seems top notch. Anyone running them?

500 USD? Much less than that I recently spoke with a few dismantlers, and at 125 per 4-1 and 150 per 3-2, you would still have money left over for hot coating and shipping with a 500 USD budget

Cheers,
Sach

TonyG

I'm running (been running for about a year now) the SFR stage 2.

Zero problems.

TonyG

cpt_koolbeenz

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=2444872198

CBRE

I won a Bored throttle body from them yesterday for $179.50, not to bad, I will install it over the winter with the new turbo and other goodies, the header looks nice for the price, any performance to be gained though?

Sach951

The stock headers are supposed to be very good. I don't think you'll see any performance improvement from swapping headers. Or not much, at the least, unless you do something drastic a la 4-1 as in the stage II that Tony is running.

Tell us a bit about it Tony? I'm guessing it has decreased some of your midrange grunt yet improves flow and top end?

Thanks,
Sach

89Turbo944

The headers look like they are very amature. The joints between the two pipes is very abrupt and the welds look like crap. I would be warrie about those headers. If they get to hot you may have a problem with leaks at the welds. Just how i look at it

Tim

TonyG

Sach951

>>>Tell us a bit about it Tony? I'm guessing it has decreased some of your midrange grunt yet improves flow and top end?<<<

Well... there's not really much to tell. The header is part of a 400RWHP kit that SFR has finished developing. The kit consists of the 4 into 1 header, cross over, a 60-1HiFi/T4 turbo, a Milledge head/cam/valvetrain with additional work over and beyond what Milledge provides in terms of exhaust porting, injectors, fuel pump, on and on. A very complete kit.

The results on my car have yeilded a 390+RWHP at approx 16 psi boost at 1000' elevation using the stock intercooler.

Altough the header is a fantastic header (and SFR is now making the 4 into 1 for the biggest of the big names in 951 racing.. and I can't tell you who... as it's not my place), it's really designed as a important piece of the package that facilitates upper midrange & top end power (which is what I wanted). Every piece in the kit, is designed for the same powerband, which is why it all works together so well.

The header is V band flanged, so disconnection from the cross over pipe requires loosening (1) 11mm bolt (about 15 seconds), and the other side of the cross over is similarly V banded, as is the back of the turbo. Turbo removal can be done by one person in just over 30 minutes!

The header primaries, and collector diameter are not stock, and the cross over pipe diameter is not stock either.

The header is 321 stainless, with beautiful welds (as usual). The fit is perfect out-of-the-box, and thus far, there has been zero problems in several thousands of miles of typical street driving (including about 12 track days) .


That's about it.....


TonyG

Peckster

You can't get your's welded?

MitchB

If the re-welding question is for me, well...

I've heard for years that repeated high temp/cooling cycles has a tendency to cause even the strongest metal to crystalize and become brittle. The brittle steel is difficult to weld and has a higher tendency to re-crack after the weld.

Something else I was told by my mech was that the earlier 951's had exhaust plumbing that was/is very tightly packaged and the pieces are somewhat "jammed" against each other. This, compounded with the expansion/contraction cycles, is largely responsible for the problems these cars have with cracking manifolds, manifold stud failures, and various exhaust issues. I haven't dove in yet, but he tells me this is also what causes the replacement job to be much tougher than a NA (which is a breeze...)

Supposedly, around '88 the manifolds were changed to a unit that had greater flex areas and alleviated these problems.

Can anyone confirm this?
I think I'll be looking for a set of late stock manifolds....
If anyone has a set drop a PM...

tazman

I will probably be selling my headers when I can find the time to finish taking them off. I just have a lot to do right now and only get a little time here and there to work on the car.

DAR951

If MitchB isn't interested, I could be. Am not too far away (MD, DC area) and not in a big hurry, so it might be a good fit... Let me know your timing and what you want for them. Thanks.

turbo944

I was thinking the changeover came before 88, but perhaps not. Either way, a LOT of early cars were changed over to the later header design when the crack occurred and Porsche did replace many of them under warranty or even free depending on dealerships and when the problem occurred for some time. My 86 already had that done and it was one of the things I looked for on the car knowing what I did already. The NA never sees the exhaust temps that the turbo cars do, so the heat cycle change is much greater on those cars than on an NA and increased the stress a good deal more. I don't know about jammed against each other, but those pipes have to grow/shrink some as they heat cycle and the place that absorbed those changes was most often the spot where the pipes were welded together.