advice on sprint car style headers

[gibraltar]

I will be running sprint car style headers on my track T. Need advice on whether end needs to be supported from someone who has run this style exhaust for a few years. On my sprint cars we never ran any rear support and I don't remember ever having a header break from pounding and fatigue. Plenty bent up what has your experience been on the street?

 

[RPM]

We have never run any kind of support on the header or muffler.

 

[2old2fast]

I would think it would depend on how heavy the muffler is & how well constructed the headers are. Mine started to sag & cracked a header pipe after about 9 yrs. & 25 K miles .
dave

 

[fordsbyjay]

You hardly ever see any type of support but mine cracked. In all fairness I was having some timing issues one night and back firing through the carb and out the exhaust. It was hot enough in the headers to ruin the ceramic coating. The cracks developed after that so I think it might have got hot enough to temper the metal or something.

 

[Wild Mango]

My present build I have run a collector support out each side bolted to the tailshaft housing bolts on the TH350. Logic there is, everything moves as one. If the header supports were a chassis mount the engine would move on the mounts with respect to the header supports and I suspect header cracking hassles I have had on other builds were caused by this differential movement and vibration.
Fordsbyjay's picture looks like a fatigue crack to me........................................

 

[Youngster]

When tubing is bent with a mandral the outside area is stretched causing it to ''thin out''. The more bend ,the more stretch. Jay's crack is on one of therear tubeswith a pretty sharp bend. I'm with Wild Mango here. That looks to be a stress crack. As for comparing a set of track headers to street headers, street headers have to endure much more vibration than track headers.

Ron

 

[bobby6319]

mine also craked on every bend and i only have 500o miles on them with the 7 inch baffles in mine. I ran a piece of 3/4 square tubing with PIECE OF ANGLE CUT TO FIT THE TUBING MONTED IT TO THE TRANNY MOUNT AND DRILLED through the bottom of the tips and bolted them and now they move very little. sorry about the yelling didnt notice i hit that key i cant type so i was looking at the key pad and i wasn't about to retype all that

 

[TubT]

I support my mufflers/extensions, just because they looked like they moved too much to make me comfortable. The common areas for sprint header cracking is at the curve where they pipes collect, and at the flange on the rear pipe.