I have been interested in tuned exhaust headers for some time. Most of the widely available header design information focuses on peak horsepower for drag racing. Since I have always been more interested in autocrossing, my focus was on maximizing the area under the torque curve over a broad range of engine speeds. This led to much longer than normal primary pipes. I started with 44 inch long primary pipes and later shortened the primary pipes to 40 inches after a changing camshafts. The primary pipes for drag racing headers tend to be 32 to 34 inches long. The primaries were made from 1-1/2" diameter tubing, the smallest diameter tubing I was able to find at the time. I have since learned that 1-1/4" or 1-3/8" tubing would have been more appropriate for the 164 cubic inch engine.

Here is an early version of the headers I made for the Deserter. The glasspack muffler was race only because of the noise level. I used a "turbo" style muffler on the street.

Here is a more recent version with SuperTrapp mufflers. The SuperTrapp mufflers weigh only 4 pounds each compared to 12 pounds for a turbo muffler.

Here is the drivetrain out of the car showing how the headers wrap around the rear suspension area.

Rear view

This is a concept for shorter length tuned headers with merge collectors for the Deserter.

This is an equal length tuned header system with merge collectors designed to fit in a late model Corvair.

The stainless steel components and a lot of hand fitting make these systems very expensive.

Here is a modified commercial header for comparison. These are short and not equal length, but should produce a power increase over the stock log manifolds and are more likely to fit the average Corvair owner's budget.

 

 

 

e-mail Address: sales at blackhawkengr dot com
Last Update:   May 18, 2009 5:26 PM
©2000-2009 Black Hawk Engineering