DO THEY WORK? LOW-$ EBAY HEADERS

we've all seen the inexpensive long tube headers for LS motors offered on ebay the question is do they work in this video we compared the low buck eBay long tube headers to the brand names not only that we compare the stock exhaust manifolds to shorty headers and long tubes and not just on one motor on three we start out with a stock for eight then modified for eight and finish up on a canned ls3 this will be find out if long tube headers actually offer power and how the eBay headers compare to the brand name so how do headers improve power well it's through something called scavenging so what scavenging well the design of the header produces pressure waves these pressure waves help draw exhaust out of the combustion chamber and draw a charge air into the combustion chamber basically they improved cylinder filling now the design elements responsible for that include the primary length primary diameter and collector design it's also important to note that the exhaust system the size shape and length after the header also affect power but enough header Theory let's get to the results our first test motor was basically a stock for eight the only mods included forged pistons said thirty-six pound injectors and it was all controlled by a Holley HP management system basically it was a well tuned stock LR for 4.8 so let's find out have a stock exhaust manifold compared to shorty headers to the inexpensive eBay headers and then to the more expensive qtp headers here are the results of our first test on the headers this is on a stock lr for 4.8 liter the only modification to the motor was a set of forged 7 CC dome pistons otherwise it was stock block stock crank stock rods suck head stuck ham suck truck intake we did put thirty six pound injectors in it because we would eventually run a little bit of boost on this thing and we were controlling it with a Holley HP management system so run with the stock cast-iron exhaust manifolds this 4.8 liter produce 320 9.5 horsepower at 5700 rpm and 330 four point eight foot-pounds of torque at 4500 rpm so now let's take a look and see what happened when we install shorty headers in place of the factory cast-iron exhaust manifolds you see not a big change we picked up a little bit of power the peak numbers went up to 333 horsepower and 338 foot-pounds of torque and they happened at the same rpm so you picked up a little bit of power up in this area picked up a little bit of power but not a big change from the shorty headers which is kind of what we expect we don't normally see a big power change from shorty headers usually the long tubes pick up a ton more power so now let's take a look at our cheap ebay headers from DNA they are inch and 3/4 they exited in a two and a half inch collector and we installed a two and a half inch section of collector extension after the header remember this is on a stock 4.8 so here are the long tube DNA cheap ebay headers they picked up even more power obviously than the shorty headers peak power went up to 330 8.5 so we'll call that 339 horsepower and torque jumped up to 340 1.9 so we'll call that 342 foot-pounds the peaks occurred at different points with the long tube headers 5600 for the horsepower peak and 4800 for the torque peak but now here's the question what about a set of really expensive full stainless headers these actually were a set of stainless inch and 3/4 headers made by qtp and as you can see maybe if we get rid of the other runs we can take a look at this get rid of the shorties and the factory manifolds this is the difference between the cheap eBay headers the DNA ones and the qtp full stainless headers but we've run a lot of others and they're similar to these QT PS and again look similar to the DNA headers and in this case the DNA headers the cheap eBay headers actually made a little bit more power at the top up in this range here a little bit of a trade-off down low and then in the middle and the qtp headers made a little bit more peak torque they made three hundred and thirty six point one horsepower and three hundred forty five point two foot-pounds of torque so a couple of extra foot-pounds of torque actually two or three less peak horsepower so as you can see the big thing here is that if you compare these long tube headers to the factory exhaust manifolds even on this stock motor the long tube headers actually picked up a little bit of power not a ton but that's primarily because the motor doesn't need a lot of exhaust flow and we're not getting a lot of scavenging from the headers with this camshaft but it did pick up one from three twenty nine point five to three thirty six or a three thirty-nine so about ten horsepower with the cheap headers and let's see we've got about seven or eight foot-pounds of torque so now let's find out what happens when we run this same comparison after we modify this mode now let's run the same test stock exhaust manifolds shorty headers inexpensive eBay headers and the more expensive qtp headers on a modified four eight so we took our little test motor and replace the heads and camshaft we install this at a trick flow 205 heads and a healthy crane cam the crane cam was near 600 lifts it was at 224 to 32 degree duration split and 113 to reload separation angle let's find out if the higher power changed the numbers on our header test okay guys here is test on our modified version of that 4.8 leer that we used in part 1 we we installed a set of TFS 205 heads and a crane to 24 to 32 cam so it's a pretty good sized camshaft for a 4.8 equipped with the stock exhaust manifolds are modified 4.8 produced 420 6.9 so we'll say 427 horsepower at 7000 rpm and 369 point six or 370 foot-pounds of torque at 5,600 see we got a nice little torque plateau here that's nice so now when we installed the shorty headers the shorty headers actually picked up a little bit of power a little bit more than when it was stock obviously so with the shorty headers the peak power jumped up to 330 2.8 we'll call that 433 force power and three hundred and seventy three point nine or 374 foot-pounds of torque the torque Peaks actually occurred 100 rpm lower for each for the shorty headers but not a big change so we picked up about seven horsepower and four or five foot-pounds of torque as you can see not big gains from the shorty headers but again we don't ever expect big gains because the shorty headers don't flow a ton more than the stock exhaust manifolds but obviously they flow a little bit more now let's take a look at what happens when we install our long tube headers so first these are the inexpensive eBay DNA headers their inch and three-quarter with the two and a half inch collector with a collector extension on it compared to the stock manifolds the power output jump to four hundred and forty three horsepower at 6,900 and three hundred and seventy nine foot-pounds of torque at 5500 with these cheap DNA long tube headers so we picked up whole like 17 horsepower so it was pretty good and about ten foot pounds of torque over the stock manifolds now let's take a look at our expensive qtp long tube headers and again if we get rid of the others get rid of the shorty headers and let's even get rid of the stock ones so this is a comparison between our cheap ebay headers and the expensive qtp stainless steels which actually the DNA cheap headers are also stainless so that's nice but you can see very little difference through most the curve all the way from here up to here very little difference a little bit of a change right there but down here at the bottom is where we see the difference and this actually might be more a function of the extensions that we put on each one of the headers one is two and a half ones three inch because that's what size collector each one of them had and the length was maybe slightly different but we are starting to see a little bit of a trade-off here the inch and 3/4 actually made a little bit more low speed power and then drop down but the big thing here is that those cheap DNA eBay headers obviously worked pretty well the last test was run on an ls3 crate motor equipped with a camshaft the 54 - 459 - 11 camp came from Comp Cams guys that look that up might notice hey that's a cathedral port cam what's it doing on a Rick port motor don't worry it works fine the crate motor also featured a Holley HP management system controlling larger injectors on this motor we compared shorty headers to - long tube headers one being the inexpensive DNA headers the other being a set a hooker long tube swap headers okay here's the third test this one we're comparing shorty headers to cheap ebay long tubes and instead of expensive brand-name ones this test is run on a ls3 crate motor equipped with a healthy comp cam the cam was a 54 - 459 - 11 cam so it's a - 31 - 39 at 50 pretty healthy cam this allowed our ls3 crate motor run with the Holley HP management system allowed the crepe motor to make 543 horsepower and 505 foot-pounds of torque so now let's take a look and see what happens when we add our long tube headers so here are the DNA cheap eBay headers equipped with these inch and three-quarter into two and a half inch headers the power output jump to 555 horsepower peak torque was up to 514 foot-pounds of torque so we added we got some good power gains there you know 13 or 14 horsepower eleven or twelve foot-pounds of torque at the peak but take a look down here take a look at the torque gains down here I mean we're talking about 35 or 40 foot-pounds down low and that's where long tube headers really excel I mean obviously they made more power everywhere through the whole curve but the scavenging effect offered by the long primary tubes and the header design help draw exhaust out but they also help draw the induction charge in so they're improving cylinder filling making more power and obviously they do it all the way through the power curve now let's take a look at our high-dollar brand-name headers actually these came from hooker which we like the guys from hooker and these headers work really well we've used them on a bunch of stuff as a matter of fact they're usually our go-to headers for any of the LS dyno testing as you can see the hooker headers made a little bit more peak power at the top 557 horsepower peak torque was the same they lost out a little bit down low some of this is obviously due to the length of the the collector extension that we run as a matter of fact most of the stuff in the 3,500 and below range has less to do with the header than it does to do with what you're doing after the header the the cheapy DNA EBA headers had a two and a half inch collector with two and a half inch pipe coming from the collector extension but the length wasn't exactly the same as the length of three inch pipe that we used on the hooker headers now the hooker headers were also inch and 7/8 primaries which could account for some of this but it's an interesting test obviously these cheap DNA headers work ok guys what did we learn from this header test in my opinion we learn three things the first of which shorty headers did offer power but not a lot and let's face it that's almost by design they have to fit exactly where the stock exhaust manifolds were so they're kind of limited the next thing we learn is that long tube headers definitely make power and those power gains increase with the power out the motor not only that long tube headers make more power everywhere you see there's a common misconception that stock exhaust manifolds or even shorty headers make more low-speed power but nothing can be further from the truth long tube headers excel at torque production so keep that in mind when you're looking for torque the final thing we learn is that those inexpensive Ebates long tube headers performed every bit as good as the brand name and you know that's not surprising since in some cases they might be an exact duplicate the one thing this power test doesn't tell you is how well these headers fit how long they last or the customer service you get if you do have a problem and those are all things to consider when buying a header so what do you think will you go with the cheap eBay headers or the name brain let me know in the comments make sure to LIKE share subscribe ring the bell lots of cool stuff coming up thanks for watching

Channel: Richard Holdener

Views: 274,707

Keywords: EBay, cheap, junkyard, headers, shorty, long tubes, ls, richard holdener, speed secrets, dyno, hooker, stock, manifolds, 4.8L

Id: 9Lckpw_81PQ

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019