How do headers improve performance

Passionate about everything mechanical. Ifandi has been involved with motorcycles and cars since the old days - in his family's auto parts shop. Want to keep in touch? This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.

Hit enter to search or ESC to close. By Ifandi S. July 28, June 29th, Common Questions , Exhaust. One Comment. Exhaust gases and sound vibrations exit to the exhaust system from here. Alternatives To Improve Car Sound. Muffler Delete A muffler delete is where you uninstall the muffler from your exhaust system. Resonator Exhaust Tip Resonator exhaust tip works directly opposite from a muffler.

Drilling Holes On Exhaust Drilling holes on an exhaust could improve engine sound. Ifandi S. Before They Run Out. Share Tweet Share Pin. Legal Information This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.

Car Performance Boss Best resources online to improve your car performance! Reach out: hello carperformanceboss. Some exhausts are extremely loud while others are aggressive — yet tolerable. They are aggressive but not deafening to the passengers.

Check out the article I linked above for choosing exhaust. Headers are more tricky to install than a catback exhaust. Catback exhausts are less tricky to install than a header but they require you to loosen lots of nutes and potentially cut off some parts from your stock exhaust.

Both installations can be done at home — there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube. You could look it up online for details but in short, it prevents dealers from taking away your whole warranty just because you have installed aftermarket parts.

To void your warranty, your dealer must prove how your aftermarket install is a direct cause of your issue. With this in place, you will still lose parts of your warranty. In general, you will lose warranty for parts that are involved during the install. For example, you will not lose the warranty for your battery after installing a catback exhaust.

Both headers and catback exhausts do not require tune to operate — they will still provide you with some horsepower but it could be limited.

Generally, you want to bring your car to a tune after installing headers — you could gain even more horsepower and ensure check engine light is not turned on. Maybe get the tune only after you have installed other components like performance air filters and cold air intake. Note that once you tune your car, you could lose warranty on many parts of your car. I discuss more about tuning here.

If you care about the looks, then you might want to go for a catback exhaust instead. Exhaust headers live inside the engine bay and they are not visible from the outside. Whereas catback exhausts are visible from the outside due to the aftermarket tailpipe that it includes. You could even get a resonator exhaust tip if you want your car to look aggressive and sound even louder. Again, this is because the exhaust flow changes by an exhaust header is significant enough to throw a CEL.

On the other hand, catback exhaust will not change your exhaust flow to the point where CEL is on. For performance and horsepower gain, you definitely should go for headers. They provide more horsepower horsepower and even more if you decide to bring your car for a tune. For an improved sound. You should install a catback exhaust instead of headers. Catback exhausts or any exhausts really, come pre-installed with a performance muffler that will make your car sound louder and more aggressive.

Before choosing the exhaust, you could listen to the before and after sound from YouTube videos or forums. This way, you can get the exact sound improvement that you want. The other three strokes are necessary evils required to make the power stroke possible. If these three strokes consume power, they are a drain on the engine. During the exhaust stroke , a good way for an engine to lose power is through back pressure.

The exhaust valve opens at the beginning of the exhaust stroke, and then the piston pushes the exhaust gases out of the cylinder. If there is any amount of resistance that the piston has to push against to force the exhaust gases out, power is wasted.

Using two exhaust valves rather than one improves the flow by making the hole that the exhaust gases travel through larger. In a normal engine, once the exhaust gases exit the cylinder they end up in the exhaust manifold. In a four-cylinder or eight-cylinder engine, there are four cylinders using the same manifold. It turns out that the manifold can be an important source of back pressure because exhaust gases from one cylinder build up pressure in the manifold that affects the next cylinder that uses the manifold.

The idea behind an exhaust header is to eliminate the manifold's back pressure. By making this comment, Beckman proves the point that headers are one of many ways to increase horsepower and speed in an engine. While they are not the only tool available to do so, they are one of the most effective.

The fact that the NHRA took the time to pass down stringent regulations proves that headers can help increase horsepower considerably. For instance, the consensus is that smaller-diameter headers are ideal for mild street engines, as they build more torque and midrange engine speeds. On the contrary, large-diameter pipes feature power increases with higher RPMs, killing low-end torque in the process. So, when choosing headers, you should make sure you select the right size for your engine.

Failure to do so could end up causing more harm than good, putting unnecessary stress on your engine. The right fit, however, could increase horsepower, no matter the size of your engine. All three of these companies produce high-quality accessories well-known throughout the automobile industry.

We recommend speaking with a customer service associate at your local automobile store to help determine which header are best for your vehicle. Another option you have is to read through customer reviews online. These also can give you an idea of whether a particular set of headers will work with your engine. There are also a couple of calculations that you can run to help determine the peak torque RPM and proper header size for your engine. First and foremost, you can calculate the peak torque RPM, which allow you to identify the cross-section area for the first pipe.

To do so, take the central pipe area, multiply by 88, and then divide by the displacement of one cylinder. You can also take the time to determine the required displacement of one cylinder. You can do so by taking the peak torque RPM, dividing by 88,, and multiplying by the movement of one cylinder. Then, increase this figure by the total number of cylinders in your engine to determine the primary pipe area for your entire unit.