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When I dropped the 302 in the Galaxie I put a set shorty headers on it. I decided at the time that I would take a hammer to my headers to make sure that I could get a socket on every header bolt. I made a post here (old forum) and the general consensus was that the loss of power would be well worth the convenience of being able to easily tighten the header bolts. However there were a few that said I had made a significant reduction in my engines ability to make power. I never looked back, and was glad I did it as it saved me a lot of frustration and time when working on this car. Today after watching this real world video I will never run another set of headers with out taking a hammer to them. Very interesting video.
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This is what I did to mine. I used a piece of pipe as a die. I picked one that was a little larger than the socket and then tapped on it with a hammer until I had the clearance I wanted.
Number 4 is the most aggressive modification. I had to dent it quite a bit to get the socket to clear.
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Function over form or put another way, what works versus what looks great and is very hard to deal with. I would do the same in a heart beat.
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428cj wrote:
Function over form
If you do it right you can have both. thats why I used a pipe as a die so that I could control the modification. They are consistant enough all the way through that with the right coating they would look they came that way from the factory.
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Wow, who knew! That is a great video. Bring on the hammers!
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I don't think you are REALLY losing much power by that. Besides, I have NEVER had a set of headers that I didn't have to make a dent in a tube somewhere to make fit. And I ALWAYS noticed a dramatic improvement over manifolds. You Do sort of crate a bit of a higher pressure wave where velocity will increase in the neckdown section, but will go back to what it was. Like a venturi.
Besides, even headers have back pressure. It is the length that tunes the reversion pulse that determines where and how much power they make. I say "HAMMER AWAY!!!!!"
Last edited by guitar74 (April 13, 2018 10:30 am)
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This also seems to be why, if you want coated headers, then it may be best to fine tune the fit and then send them out for coating instead of hammering on the nice ceramic coating and risking cracking it. I think it is way more common for headers to not fit perfectly than for them to drop in and clear everything out-of-the-box.
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Recently saw an episode of "Roadkill" on TV and they beat up a set of headers thoroughly and yet while doing this with various dyno runs, they resulted in about a total of 2 hp loss and about 1 foot pound of torque loss! Needless to say I and they were very surprised. I cannot recall the exact numbers and I may have them reversed, yet this is very impressive. They used a hammer by itself and sometimes a hammer on a hammer.
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Recently saw an episode of "Roadkill" on TV and they beat up a set of headers thoroughly and yet while doing this with various dyno runs, they resulted in about a total of 2 hp loss and about 1 foot pound of torque loss! Needless to say I and they were very surprised. I cannot recall the exact numbers and I may have them reversed, yet this is very impressive. They used a hammer by itself and sometimes a hammer on a hammer.
LOL! That is what the link in Daze's first post was to, "Engine Masters", with that guy from "Roadkill". That sure is a fun and interesting test.
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I watched some of the other "Engine Masters" episodes on Youtube and I like what they do. It's unbiased and cuts through the crap. In another of their videos I was shocked to find that full roller rockers compared to stamped steel rockers add little to nothing in HP and torque and the little bit they add is only around 6000 RPM.
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