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.

[Bitter]

ya, the header you have is chromed mild steel i think. thats ****ty its broken soo fast, why didnt you take it off to repair it? btw that brazing wont hold as well as a good tig weld will.

[Bigmeanbulldog55]

ya, the header you have is chromed mild steel i think. thats ****ty its broken soo fast, why didnt you take it off to repair it? btw that brazing wont hold as well as a good tig weld will.

It's not chrome. It's custom, 2 were made. I've had it for a good 9 months now. I use the DEI tape. I still have it on the top of the header. The bottem is uncovered and I welded some bolts to it and made a heat sheald to keep from melting my fans. Probably wouldn't melt them, but it's better to be sure. I know that the brass won't hold like a good tig weld. A good tig will hold better than the mig weld I used. But I don't have a tig, and I've never tried to weld with that system either. It was a really tough spot to get to, and I had the header off the car. I had to get the wire to go down though a 1/8-1/4 inch wide gap down about 1.25 inches. It was like opperation. The wire kept hitting the sides and I couldn't get to the hole to weld it. It wasn't a great design. I'm designing a new one right now. It's a 4-2-1 design that will be easier to fix when it breaks. The 4-1 just isn't working for me.