Red's headers welding question.

corvette8n

corvette8n

Well-known member
My Red's headers has a crack in the seam on the drivers side,what's the best way to fix this, I'm going to have to remove header and take it somewhere to be fixed. Does it need to be gas welded?,mig,tig,stick?, the answer will determine where I take it. The guy I bought the car from gave me a new set of headers in a box, but they look like aftermarket Chinese, no name or any info on box. I would rather get the Reds fixed.
 

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they are just mild steel exhaust tubing so technically any of the above methods will work. they are probably mig welded to begin with so that will match up with what is there. tig welder will work well too.
 
The headers from Reds that I have used are tig welded together. I
just finished a repair similar to yours for a gentleman with a set off a Ford Y Block. A tig weld repair would be the best imo.
 
I find it kind of curious that you won't even try the "Chinese" headers, even after the "Red's" cracked on you. I have a set of what I believe to be "Chinese" headers that I bought second-hand, but have obviously never been used. The headers themselves seem to be quality pieces with properly spaced and drilled 3/8" and 7/16" bolt holes. The fasteners supplied with them were another matter; I couldn't get them to fit, no matter what I tried. A little measuring showed that the fasteners supplied were all 10 mm. Once I bought the proper sized American bolts, they went right on and I'm quite happy with them. I have experienced this with several "Chinese" products; the basic product is good, but then they "fumble on the five yard line" with something like this fastener deal.
 
Tig if it super clean like media blasted inside and out. If you just clean it up on the outside mig weld it
 
Dennis: I may try the Chinese header while the other one is off. I tried holding it next to the Red's to see if it looked the same, hard to tell not much room, funny I didn't find any fasteners or gaskets in the box. Of course this stuff was in the trunk for who knows how long.
 
No fasteners? I think you lucked out. I spent 3 days researching the best way to safely and cleanly enlarge he holes in the flanges until I came up with the bright idea of checking the fasteners; no wonder they wouldn't thread into the block. 10 mm is really close to 3/8" though.
 
It has been my experience the TIG process often does not like what has previously been applied and what residue exists at the interior of the header. My suggestion is to take the Header to a professional level source and adhere to his advice.
 
I'm using Speedway center dump headers on my F1. The left one wouldn't clear the steering box. Got a couple of mandrel bends, bolted the header to a spare block, cut, fit and gas welded the joints. Got them Jet Hot coated. 8 years and no problems.
 
Clean off the old weld and drill a small 1/16" hole at each end of the crack to keep it from migrating. Find someone with a TIG machine and weld it up. You are overthinking a simple repair!
 
There are some replies here that are good and some not really reliable.Possibly made by fellows that are not welders,get an opinion from a real welder. My experience is it can be a crap shoot when you attempt to dive in with a tig. It has to be squeaky clean.Just sayin.

R
 
RE: Cheap Headers . . . Chinese or otherwise: Like a lot of products we see today, sometimes they "look good" on the outside, but are not necessarily manufactured that well on "the inside". I bought a set of cheap Bob Drake headers for my 32 Cabriolet a couple years ago (nobody else had anything in stock - went to Red's first). They looked just fine and fit well . . . so I threw them on and made an event I needed to be at. I spent the extra $$$ to have them ceramic coated (worth more than the headers themselves).

Later on, I had the car up on the rack (no muffler pipes on) and decided to shine a light up the header to see what I could see where the rear cylinder pipe met the main tube. Well - the main tube was NOT cut to match the down-tube profile at the mounting point. They'd simply grabbed a torch and burned a rough quarter-sized hole someplace in the general location of the down tube! What the heck? Talk about poor workmanship that one could NOT see . . . so off they came and I worked with Dave Havlir on a custom header setup (I wanted things done/routed in a specific manner). They were not cheap - but I'd already experienced "cheap" - and that was not the goal.

So - talk to your vendors about how well they match up the holes/cutouts on the down-tube to main tube transitions . . . cause you can't "fix them later" when you receive crap like I did.
 
Tube fit up was the first thing I checked on my unknown "Chinese" headers. It was pretty easy, because they are "center-dumps". I was quite surprised to find they were almost perfect. "Center-dumps" are probably easier to make than end dumps, but still...
 
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