I'm Looking at putting a set of equal lenth headers on my car and was wondering what are the best to go for!

Price????
Availability????
sound????
Power????

I was thinking about Hayward & Scott, but as i want them yesterday i'm not too sure about the 6week wait!

Scott

[Edited by RB5SCOTT - 11/4/2003 3:29:15 PM]

 

has any one tried the power station headers.. seem a good price at £495

edited to say, £400 for group buy I would be interested if they would fit my02 and suit a baby td04 turbo

[Edited by WRX_Rich - 11/4/2003 7:01:21 PM]

 

Would be nice to hear from Bob Rawle, Pat, Andy F, Trout, Mark A! its Mark's fault for putting this idea in my head

[Edited by RB5SCOTT - 11/4/2003 8:06:36 PM]

 

A standard/scoobysport exhaust system is 2.5"s, if the headers were that big you might get a bar by 7000

[Edited by RB5SCOTT - 11/4/2003 11:05:01 PM]

 

Scott these GT spec ones look nice quality

GT-SPEC HEADER

or

Flat 4 Engineering do an HKS replica or there is the Invidia Headers whci look like a Work of Art

Flat 4 Engineering HKS Header or Invidia


Conrad

[Edited by RSVR Racer - 11/5/2003 11:38:58 AM]

 

What turbo are you running?
How important is power/rpm stuff? (peak power or good torque spread?)

 

I am interested in a set also but theres so much choice.

HKS
GP MOTO
OBX
iON
GRUPPE S
Power Engineering
Torque Developments
H & S
Borla
AVO

Which ones are the best or are they all more or less the same?


[Edited by RSVR Racer - 11/4/2003 3:56:11 PM]

[Edited by RSVR Racer - 11/4/2003 4:37:35 PM]

 

Gruppe-S seem to be cheap, proven, available.

Paul

 

I have a big turbo (TD05/06) so its laggy already.

i'm led to believe H&S are the best but are not the cheapest and you also have to wait for them to be made

 

Paul

Available from where? Are they true equal length or as near as you can get!

I'm looking for a good torque spread more than ultimate top end power, i will let the turbo do that

thanks
Scott

 

I got mine direct from Gruppe-S in the US, emailed my order with address details, and said that I would phone to confirm. Gave payment over the phone, and had the headers in 3 days.

As for results, Andy Forrest and John Banks have done a variety of rolling road and 'road dyno' testing, and shown the Gruppe-S to give good gains accross the board, without adding much lag at all.

I personally don't think the H&S ones are any better than the rest. Although they have a flared entry from the head, the port on the head isn't massive anyway. They also have a few extra bends that are redundant in my opinion.

Depending on your finances, I think it's best to try the headers that suit your paticular setup. The Gruppe-S for one are cheap enough, mapping aside to try just for the hell of it.

BTW, I'm not saying the Gruppe-S are definitely th ebest, just that they are good enough to try, and that they are not going to be far from the best.

Paul

 

Ok thanks Paul, do you have an addy for them?

 

Scott,
Think you need to find out what will work best for your set up,ie
equal lenght or non equal length??

Jonno

 

Scot try here. If you fancy getting a set see if they'll do you a discount for two pairs?

Gruppe S

 

Cheers Conrad

Right! I'm looking into it looks like a choice between H&S and Gruppe-S

Couple more questions if anyone know the answers, What are the internal diameters of these two systems?

Will the gruppe-s fit a sleeved H&S up-pipe?

 

They are most certainly very touchy things, headers! It's very important to match them to the turbo.
TD05/06 (with a 20G wheel?) should work well with a 4-1 collector, I'd have thought, as they tend to be better 'higher up'.
I'd be very wary of equal length headers, myself - they seem particularly touchy about their environment. For instance, the type PE do (can't remember the design it's based on - sorry!) works very well with the TD04, but can be rather disappointing with others. Best thing about them is that they are pretty universaly quiet, if you like that
The HKS ones are reliably good - from my experience, they don't make things worse below around 4k2 (marginally higher spool-point), but above 4k2 they seriously make a difference! Suitable for the larger end of turbos, then... I don't think there is any realistic maximum flow for them either!

 

This is getting harder by the minute

PE's look to be 4-2-1,besides they are too expensive

H&S i'm led to believe that they are pretty much equal with 1.5"diameter

Gruppe-s looks to be a bigger diameter?????

Jonno has the HKS headers, sound nice but are expensive??

Scott
btw My Turbo is a TD05/06 with Garrett wheel

 

I found the H&S headers leaked at the slip joints, but worked better with a TD04 than a larger turbo.

The Gruppe S seem to work well with anything so far if you can make sure the collector gasket doesn't leak, but this is a problem with a lot of headers. They are also very cheap.

 

with the gruppe-s there is the option of the large bore , solid up-pipe set or the smaller bore with flexi up-pipe.

having tried the large bore set and the smaller bore set,(although with a solid GGR up-pipe as I did not like the look of the flexi,) I can report that I prefer the smaller bore stuff. quicker spool in lower gears, less lag between gear changes and a better fit around the oil filter/radiator bracket area. I am not too interested on figures, preferring the "seat o pants" meter,I have more torque low down with the smaller bore set, not much according to delta dash but these runs where in third when IMO, it's second that suffers with headers.

if you are chasing higher figures , I would go for the big bore stuff. the big bore stuff pulled right to the limiter on my car where the smaller bore can be felt to just peak before it. I am sure that if you "hard tuned" your car for figures , the larger stuff could give higher gains in the top end. my own car did not loose anything with the smaller bore set but it was not tuned on the edge.

 

T-uk

I think the smaller bore is what i want, the turbo is laggy enough as it is ( thats why i have'nt wanted to do the manifold before) and the turbo pulls strong at the top anyway!

thanks

 

Scott

I have the Gruppe S ones with solid up-pipe. To avoid problems you should opt for the slip jointed one that way it'll give a fair bit of flexibility, especially as the flanges on the Gruppe S are not the best quality.......... and can blow - but dont let this put you off - they are not all like that - mine just needed to be readjusted once on - I had them fitted the same time that I opted for the TD05/06 to try out - nice and cheap turbo

They are about the cheapest and the best value for money and are pretty much a copy of the HKS ones that retail at £815 plus Vat

About a couple of Months ago on the Group Buy the Gruppe S ones were only £329!!!!! yep all in - only thing you need is a couple of bungs (Lambda bung and EGT bung)- which a lot of performance tuning places have anyway - like TSL - on top of that you'll need to wrap them... but with the bungs and wrapped and ties about £400 all in - so if your not on a group buy expect to pay about £500 - still cheap

Thinking about it maybe you wont need the egt bung if you have a much newer car

So just go for the Gruppe S ones - I doubt you'll get any headers at such short notice and mapped!!! prior to the RR day - so that might give me a chance.........

 

Think the PS ones gave them about 25bhp/25lbs or something like that

They are different to Gruppe S ones

They probably have in stock - maybe you can get these fitted? - you can check on my car while your at it!!

 

Forgot to say 25/25 so thats about 40bhp at PE - so I'd hold out Scott

 

422bhp then Steve then..............! POP go my internals

 

Don't work against the turbo - work with it. If the turbo only really 'gets going' above 4k, don't try do bring it down at the expense of screwing up the top-end - you'll end up with one marginally better at the bottom & worse at the top!
Does the turbo only start coming in at higher rpm, or is it laggy, or both?
Do you know which compressor wheel it is? Simpler - is it an AndyF or LP TD05/06? They're a little different in their needs...

 

I think andyf runs a home made small bore , big bore gruppe-s set. iirc it is a scoobysport up-pipe with welded up collector and a weeks filing.

 

Its a Lateral with garrett wheel, Its about as laggy as you can expect from a turbo of that size!

Its making good power on standard headers so any kind of headers( as such) will flow better. I just don't want to go too bigger bore that they slow the turbo more than necessary

 

So would some 1/2" headers make for good spool up then?

 

May be a bit restricted at the top i thought about 1.5inch would be fine

 

Shouldn't really be that laggy - I run the same turbo. For me it's a bit poo in the lower gears (thank you Mr Link for letting the wastegate flop about & not reacting very well to the very sudden onset of boost... Dawes does marvels here but I don't like the on/off nature, but I digress...) but 1 bar with HKS headers comes around at 3k2; for an 'overtaking' example, holding the car at 4k & flooring it the boost comes on pretty damn fast - that's the headers liking to be above 4k, really. Not a lot of lag, certainly. You wouldn't want it coming in more suddenly as the tyres already are scrabbling for grip with the speed the boost comes in.
So, the HKS work... Gruppe-S should, the iON & Borla look interesting to me but there aren't as many people around to comment on them!