Making Headers

BBShark

Garage Monkey
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Whats involved in making headers? Do you get a bunch of J bends and cut and fit them together? Are they TIG welded?
 
I haven't built an entire header, but I've had to move tubes on a couple headers due to chassis interference. I just used some mandrel bent elbows and straights and welded them together. On the '69 I ground and polished the welds smooth so that the one modified tube wouldn't look different than the other three on that side (which were one piece, not welded up sections).

It was all reasonably simple except when I had to weld near the collector entrance. You run out of electrode/torch room real quickly there. It shouldn't be a problem if you're starting from scratch, as you can weld from the "inside out". My problem was that I had to cut and reweld one of the buried tubes and wasn't in the mood to cut the other three out of the way and then have to weld them back again.
 
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