I'm talking to a raceshop that custom builds exhausts and showed them a pic of LT headers - not sure which manufacturer.

This is what I got back - are they talking sense? I'm going to get them to build the entire system for me.

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Steve ..we can make them better !!!! .. the manifold flanges appear to be 6mm stainless laser cut and need to be 8 or even 10 on the Vette and I doubt that the primaries are anywhere near equal length although an attempt has been made on the passenger side manifold to match the first and fourth. The bend is fabricated well and we can do that if you wish but we have special tooling that will mandrel bend that center line radius, which is slightly better albeit a little un-necessary. They also appear <and I may be wrong but it's hard to tell on the pic > to be inch and a half 316 bright polished stainless and that is brilliant material but too brittle for the Vette in the long term ..also need to be inch and three quarter. There's no way to see inside the primary four into one cones on the pic but we do a specially shaped angle cut velocity tip in ours to improve flow, volumetric efficency and air speed. On the drivers manifold the first and fourth primaries are also unbalanced but maybe to miss and obstacle. They do look great though to be fair !
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I certainly agree with what they are saying about the colector, a merge-type collector really helps with exhaust flow...but they are usually pretty expensive ($100-200 just for the collectors, which then need to be welded to the exhaust after the old collectors are cut off). As for the design, well...the packaging in a Vette is pretty tight, most header manufacturers do their best to create equal length headers, but this sometimes is not an option because of the tight spaces to deal with. They may be able to make some marginal gains...but at what cost to you? The overall benefit might not be worth the money spent!

 

Unless you're going class racing and need every last bit of HP, perfectly equal length headers are not really going to show any real benefit. Besides whatever length was decided on would only optimize the HP and torque within a certain RPM range. Have they quoted you a price for building these? Even for someone with all of the right equipment building a set of one-off headers is fairly labor intensive and so would be pretty pricey, I would think. Not that ANY top notch C4 headers are cheap! Good luck and I look forward to hearing more details. I'm not trying to talk you out of it, just stating an opinion. I've been pretty obsessive about my exhaust until I finally ended up with what I wanted and so shouldn't and won't judge anyone else on the matter!

 

No idea of price yet but it's kind of a 'trade favors' deal - they will keep all the measurements etc so that they can offer them as a product to other vette owners - the only problem is that they are in the UK so delivery times will be quite long.

Their main business is racecars - they do a lot of work for the big race teams and they design to extract max engine performance so I'm sure they will be good. The dyno will tell at the end of the day.

It'll get a full picture shoot and write up on here when they are done - probably late July.

Thanks for the comments - it looks as though they are on the right track but just need to ensure that the final product is price competitive if they want to sell more of them.

 

A friend of mine custom builds headers for some teams in the NHRA. IHRA, NASCAR and STREET CARS. I can't believe his work. It's fabulous. I've known this guy since I was 7 yrs. old. He is kinda goofy lookin and I never thought he would turn out produtcs this good. I visited him last week. This is the first time i've seen him in 9 yrs. He didn't even remember me when I walked into his garage. He has a mandrel pipe bender and to my suprise a CNC machine to cut the header flanges in which he designed the program for. Unbelievable comming from this skinny, tall, geeky lookin guy. SUPRISED THE HELL OUT OF ME AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

 

Great! Now tell him to fabricate some tri-y's and he'll sell a whole bunch of them. Me included.

 

Man, If we could get one of these guys to start making LT's for cheap, we'd be set...

 

What about mildly modded cars? On my 94 I'm doing a fresh air intake, rockers, reprogram the computer....the typical minor bolt on stuff, do out of the box headers or even a full exhaust make enough of a difference to justify the cost? I'm not trying to make an all out race car, just a bit better than stock.

 

A good set of headers and free flowing exhaust with good mufflers make a big difference. Lets it breathe.

 

What he said!

 

When I put my Hooker long tubes on the car went from 13.91 to 13.63 going through the stock cat convertor and stock mufflers. Now I'm branching off the Hooker Y Pipe into 2 1/2 inch duals no cat back to a set of Flowmasters. Guess i'll have to wait till it's done then run it at the track and see how it runs

 

Steve, you may also want to contact Rodney Davis at www.headerdesign.com (email: admin@headerdesign.com) to see what he thinks. He's an intelligent, good guy who knows what he's doing.