I've seen cheap aftermarket headers (for Japanese cars) where the flange
was so crooked and warped, that you pretty much had to cut some tubes,
bolt the header to a junk head, and then reweld them, in order to get
any chance of not having exhaust gasket leaks. I've also built several 4
cylinder headers using domestic V8 headers for source material (cut all
the tubes apart and then select bends and straights from the pieces) and
found that in many of those, the diamond where the four tubes join is
formed by the guy shooting in the dark with his MIG gun - there were
chunks of welding wire sticking out from the joint and there was extra
metal protruding into the primaries.
On the other hand, good quality headers (such as the Hooker Super
Competition, back in the late 80's) had straight flanges and no garbage
sticking out from the welds, and the headers lasted through several
years of racing. They probably would have lasted longer if not for the
occasional excursion into the weeds that would inevitably drag the
exhaust through the dirt.
I would expect that the headers currently carried by SS, and the
Spintech merged collector headers (?), would have the quality you'd
expect from a premium header, and should last a long time especially if
you take the effort to get them ceramic coated. One of the side benefits
from headers is supposedly reduced underhood temperatures. I'm not sure
if that would still apply if you compared ceramic coated cast-iron
manifolds against coated headers.
Theo
_______________________________________________
Support Team.Net http://www.team.net/donate.html
Tigers@autox.team.net
http://autox.team.net/mailman/listinfo/tigers
http://www.team.net/archive
|