Aluminum Headers

what are you thoughts on it?

zoomies doorcar

anybody tried them?

how long they last?

best type aluminum tube to use? 6063?

best thickness?

 

Aluminum melts at , what, 1200 degrees? Exhaust temp is.........

 

Nuthin worse than droop.

In all fairness I had some high end road race guys locally that used aluminum exhaust. They had tried headers but that failed. From there back they used aluminum for weight savings.
Guess it cooled down enough once downstream a little to live.

 

pontiac cast aluminium exhaust manifolds for some of their super duty's in the early sixties, I've heard there aren't many left.

 

I'd be afraid of running over them, probably crack gue to vibration

 

aluminum zoomie

i have them on my mud car. made them myself. 6063 aluminum 3/16 thick. have blown 406 10-71 hihelix littlefield 50% over. make 40 pounds of boost. have burned down 3 threads on plug so i know motor was hot. i have only had one problem with them.(weld cracking) i have added the connector bar at the top and had no problems since. have run them three years no probs.

 

Those are short like a dragster?

 

headers

yes i have zoomies. the short ones. that is what the first guy asked about. everyone else has talked about full exhaust systems which has back pressure. and melting at 1200 i dont think they do or your heads themselves would melt. they make aluminum inserts for sparkplug holes and they dont melt. i took and messured the thickness between the two middle exhaust potrs on a sbc which are very close. if i recall it is around.150 my headers are .185. ive never heard of anyone melting that area of their head.

 

Curious, how much weight do you save if you use .1875 wall aluminum tubing?

 

3/16 wall. Wow

 

No he actually asked about zoomies on a door car. Wonder if anyone has tried at least like a funnycar length?

 

zoomies

my tubes are 18 inches long from flange to tip. flange is .250(1/4) thick and tubes are
.1875(3/16) thick. how long are the zoomies for a door car? here is a pass with the aluminum zoomies on http://mudblog.paperboyexpress.net/ then click play. im the third set of cars in black rear engine closest to camara.

 

we use a steel inner tube and an aluminum outer tube
still have the inner pipes cracking all the time if you shake it
i will probably not do it again just not worth the 8 lbs it saved
now if i could afford Ti....

 

I do them the same way John, used to have a cracking problem using .049 inners, now used .065 and never crack?!

 

aluminum outer tubes

Everytime we kick the rods out with aluminum outers we had a fire because theres no way to seal the oil out from that inner tube!We went throught he same deal 045 to 065 and nothing last like the steel outer supports only had to weld them 2times in 3years. and no fires!

Mark

 

Are you getting the .065 pre bent in kits? who sells different thickness?
I hear titanium cracks also, I go thru a couple sets of headers a year due to cracking

 

Titanium cracks and droops if you don't keep them tied up

our steel set weights 19lbs each side

 

Tim
never tried the .065 inners
maybe that would slow down the cracking issue

 

Smiley sells .049 and .065 kits or welded up sets