Heat Tape + Baffle + No Brace = Broken Header, Fixed, but just a heads up Options

[Bigmeanbulldog55]

My dang header broke again. This is the 2nd time. 1st time it broke at the collector and the down pipe just fell off. That was an easy fix because I could get all the way around it. This time the back 2 pipes and the front passenger side pipes cracked. There was a quarter inch round hole out of back drivers side pipe too. And it was in the front of it. I could not get to that thing. My dad and I spent about 5 hours screwing around with it trying to get to it. Welder, torch, and melted brass ended up kind of fixing it. There is still a little hole, but it's not noticeable audibly. My dad and I figured that what caused it was the heat tape keeping the pipe too hot and the baffle holding the flow up too much also making it hot. I ran it hard for about 20 min and it was cracked with I stopped. The fact that it didn't have a brace didn't help, so we welded a nice one on. So if you have a header, put a brace of it and watch the temp of it.

[jdg371]

Yep heat tape is bad.. all it does is make the metal more fragile due to the collected heat..

[Bitter]

Yep heat tape is bad.. all it does is make the metal more fragile due to the collected heat..

its not as bad on stainless steel, ive had my ebay header on for several months longer than he's had his, had mine wrapped for several months longer than his, and have had no problems, poor header quality has as much to do with it.