A good friend of mine has a shop that designs and fabricates parts for cars...he has mostly been working on mazdas and mitsus...now is considering doing much more with hondas

coincidentally i was going to have him make a customer header for my wife's TSX...after talking with him earlier today he said several others from this board called him...he is now thinking of doing a custom header for TSX's (manual tranny...don't know if they are different on the autos)

Option One: 321 Stainless Steel with heatstress relief (used on my car's turbo kit)..ss needs to breathe more than normal steel (that's why you see some other mfgrs headers crack under heat stress)

Option Two: Steel with JetHot Coating (this is a coating added to steel that prevents rust as well as transmits less heat to the engine bay leading to lower ambient engine air temps...less heat soak)

he has already ordered an exhaust manifold gasket from his local dealer and will have a couple header flanges laser cut (gasket matched)

We are planning on doing this in Mid July...i'd like to get an idea of who would be interested in such a header...i'm not sure how much it will cost as it depends on materials and labor...i'm not sure where the cat is on this car as i haven't had a chance to get underneath her...he would then do a hi flow cat option such as random technologies

[pics that were here are offline b/c the site is being revamped.-ricecake]

 

after you dyno it i may be interested...but not until i see a dyno =)

 

understood...what will most likely happen is we will get a dyno done at a shop close to his before and after

 

Umm... I'm not a big fan of the welding on those pipes. Are those TIG welds?

 

i'm not a welder so i'm not sure what kind they are...those pics are from the prototype header he made that was for my car (i was the prototype kit)...once he gets it exactly as he wants it he sends a sample to the metal mfgr who then will mandrel bend all pipes (that way the customer product has a lot less welds)

he builds headers for 2,000hp alcohol dragsters, he did the welding for the 2003 grassroots motorsports challenge "Hot Wheels" crx...he has been custom building turbo, supercharger, engine rebuilds, ecu tuning, etc. for the past 10 years and has no problems with any of the welds cracking...he's been working for his dad for the past 20 years as a metal fabricator (in fact his dad's shop with all its tools is right next door so everything is made to exact specs)...he was the lead developer for the aem standalone ecu for mazda & mazdaspeed proteges...he had to take a week of classes...he's also taken time out to go to turbonetics for special training courses

 

just had confirmation...those are TIG welds

 

Thanks jaje for the info. Btw, I didn't mean to pick on the welding. It's just that I have been conditioned by my welding instructor to strive for perfection. He had rejected many of my work. I'm sure it's well made. Perhaps it's the camara lighting that made it look uneven.

 

just bumping this up to let people know that we are going up weekend after next for measurements. I am probably going with the stainless steel option--since I am not looking at any FI options, the JetHot coating isn't as necessary, but anyone have any thoughts? The flanges have been ordered. I am an exhaust short of running an I/H/E combo. okay, that's like 1/3 of it, but

 

hopefully we are going to get it dyno'd before and after...it all depends on the dyno places near the shop (as he hasn't had his mustang awd dyno installed yet...around autumn)

 

take some pics when ya go, I don't really feel the need for a header, but dynos would be excellent

 

Update: We dropped the car off for the week and they will get a baseline dyno done this week...the car only has a CAI and no other mods including the tb coolant reroute.

The header should be built this week and ready for dyno fun next saturday when we go up to get the car. We will have pics and hopefully some video of the runs.

 

The prototype header was made last week. Just picked it up on Saturday (yesterday).

 

hard to tell what the welds look like from the blurry pictures...

however, I'll give a great to jethot. we did a small group send off to them with the CLS Comptech headers and some intakes. They do a great job and even as hot as the headers got, the Jethot stuff never flaked off or had any problems. It also looks great too since as you all know, stainless begins to change colors after it experiences some heat. It's a copper like color and doesn't mean that anything is wrong with the metal, just not as pretty as the smooth jethot coatings.

 

any dyno?

 

sorry about the crappy pics...snapped them this morning with an older digital camera that had low battery

a dyno was done earlier this week but it was almost 100 degrees out and high humidity (pennsylvania) and the car was immediately put on the dyno after driving it for a half hour...but in such form it still laid down 172whp with the header and injen intake (only mods)...it will get dyno'd again when the weather is cooler and we get the car back up there

wagner used 2" piping for the header to match the gasket ports so this engine is made to push a lot of air through it

wagner is going to also make a shorty header that will as the down pipe is stainless steel and is hardly restrictive (the header is)...the real bottleneck we discovered is the catback exhaust where it gets down to 1 1/2" in some areas...that is where there can be a good gain

 

172 whp aint bad in those conditions.

 

great work!!!
cant wait to see the dyno^^

 

a lot of people don't understand how dyno's work and the differences between them...from the mustang dyno, the dyno jet, to the dyno pak there are large differences between them and the SAE correction is not very reliable

what happens is people take dyno charts and just compare them to others done in different climates, different stages of tuning, different mileage on the car, etc.

i'll get the dyno chart from him hopefully this week...i'll also get some pics he took of the header (much better quality)

thanks guys

 

perhaps it would've been better to dyno before in stock form, then replace the header and dyno after on the same day. that's a better way to judge gains.

 

i agree but i didn't do the dyno and they only had a 30 minute window to do the pulls...we will do it again with the stock header and the wagner header at a later date...another dyno will be done with the shorty header too

 

I see.. that does give you a difficult way of describing power gains. It's strange that knowing the facts you just laid out above (different dynos and differences between them) the company still decided only to do one dyno of the "after" effects without doing the "before".

 

That's not true at all. Most companies (Comptech, K&N, DC Sports, Injen, Jackson Racing. etc.) provide before and after dyno charts. However, most individual only show their after dyno due to the costs.

 

If you could post the dyno curve that would be more helpful than just the peak numbers. We can analyze how the headers change the stock curve and what kind of gains throughout the rpm range they provide.

 

What's not true at all?

What you've said is true about individuals but our buddy is pushing for a product here and anything less than before/after to show gains throughout the powerband in HP and TQ is basically useless considering all the aspects he and I both have mentioned above (diff. dynos, diff. conditions) those that do "after" dynos only generally already have an OLD dynosheet of theirs to compare to and SHOULD always use the same dyno at the same shop they did it before. That makes it easy to make sense of gains since the only variable between the "after" and the "before" will be air temps and corrections can be made or at least understood.

 

I must have misread your post. I thought you were talking about companies in general don't provide before/after dyno. I know it's important to run the tests on the same dyno. That's how I did mine for the DC header install.

 

first of all, let's be clear: no one is "pushing for" a product right now--this was a custom header that we (jaje is my husband) had done for my car as a development-type project and because there is nothing else out there that seemed satisfactory. Wagner has actually gotten calls w/r/t this header because I had posted about it as a planned mod, and so the information that we are providing is because people had asked for it previously. (When and if the time comes to advertise or "push for" a product I will make sure that contact with Smitty is made and and the required vendor policies are followed.)

But since this was a "test"/personal project, the TSX with the custom header was only dyno'ed afterwards it is very hard to get dyno time and it is expensive. So...as jaje said, since there is enough interest, there will be a baseline dyno AND one with the finished product in the future, so have some patience.

 

The product is not finished yet hence the prototype status. He also has a dyno but is going through a difficult time getting insurance before he can install and run it at his shop (thus he has to run over to another shop that often overbooks the time). When it is ready there will be a before (with the injen cai) and after prototype 4-2-1 header (injen cai and the prototype header we made), and after for the "shorty" header which connects to the stock downpipe (injen cai and the shorty header)

the shorty is being designed and hopefully done next week and ready to get some results...it will most likely be available in 321 ss and steel with jethot coating

 

what we will do is take the car to the dyno the same day (leave the car on the dyno when changing headers) to take most variables away

 

yeah I understand that much. I was just clarifying another's comment about it "not being true" however that seems to have been a misunderstanding to begin with.

 

so whats the status? is the header done yet? any dyno's?

 

 

the custom header is done and on my wife's car...we are driving around with it and i'm basically take records of quality and design changes...we are also making sure all gaskets have seated properly and no leaks can form

we still have to get the dyno redone with before and after results...we are aiming for the end of august to have this completed

 

jaje...
sounds nice, hope you guys will be satisfied w/ the result, keep us updated!

 

ricecake, what's the butt dyno saying?

 

soooooooooooooo where is the DYNO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!?????!!! hehe i wanna see POWER!!!

 

andy just had his mustang awd dyno installed...we are going up there on the 28th of august (saturday) to get a baseline run, a run with the 4-2-1 header, and a run with the shorty header...we will have video and pictures too

 

yay! countin them days down

 

Oh yeh! Good luck, and thanks for the job!

Rep for you mang.

 

cant wait i wanna see!!!!

 

Update: the dyno runs had to be cancelled as Andy had to attend to a couple behind schedule projects. We are hoping for sometime next week to get back up there (1st week of September)