Looking for a good header for my AP1. Currently running a vibrant muffler and resonator with a test pipe, but unsure of what headers actually offer any gains and still sound good. I'm having guys in Challenger R/Ts pull up and compliment how the car sounds and I don't wanna screw that up! Ideas?

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Very hard to improve on stock header, that would be just about the last thing I would replace in a full N/A build. Lowering VTEC and tuning the car will yield bigger gains and overall improvement.

 

Hytech or Berk are the two I would use.

 

Hytech is the best in my opinion for headers. Only thing that would top it is if ASP or Myers will make you a header. My buddy just got his Myers Header for his 320 wheel HP Nissan Sentra B13 with a SR24VE in it and the quality is amazing! Gained about 8whp over another same size race header he had.

 

ive actually been very pleased and impressed with my PLM header...even gained 6hp from it and saved a ton of weight

 

You'll gain more from one of my mid-pipes than you would a header. The stock header is about as good as it gets.

 

why hasnt someone built a lighter header identical to stock with better merges?

 

^Mugen

 

That was actually one of the things I thought about doing myself, and offering that as part of my product line. However, as I tested different headers, I found that nothing was intuitive about the results. After seeing all the data from my exhaust, header, and intake testing, it's clear that there's really nothing intuitive about any of it.

Intuition would suggest to most people that "knife edged" merges would be ideal, since it would seem that the high velocity gasses might flow with less resistance. However, the gas flow just doesn't mean jack crap. The magic is in the resonance, and good resonance is all about creating / passing good pressure waves while reducing / rejecting bad pressure waves.

It's also clear that knife edge transitions cause very narrow "RPM windows" for scavenging and plugging, which increases the wasted scavening and plugging; and requires a more conservative tune. If you consider the slope of a low-pass filter of some audio device, a filter that has an 18 dB per octave would be comparable to a header with rounded merges, and a 36 dB slope would be like a knife edge merge from Burns. If you are an audiophile, you might know that it would be easier to integrate and tune an 18 dB slope than it would a 36 dB slope. The overall performance of the 18 dB filter might be optimal.