6.2L LS Equal Length Headers with NASCAR Tri Y Collectors! Equal vs Unequal (Science of Sound Pt2)

this video is brought to you by ag1 by athletic greens the Quest for equal length headers and a better sounding LS engine has begun or continues cuz I've been working on these already but I kind of don't film every single thing I'm doing because you have to do a lot if you ever built headers before it is a pain in the butt you cut a tube you know four or five different times and then you got to move this till it fits you need six hands to do everything show you where I got started here I have cut out every single pipe of the original flange and ground them out so I can reuse that flange from the original headers and I have the number one cylinder tacked up to be the straightest shortest possible length to The Collector which is a fixed to the the triy section and the mlar x pipe underneath these darker pieces are cut up pieces from the original header that I chopped apart and the newer stuff down there is 2 in I had laying around from Wolf aircraft and it's made out of a couple different sections because none of the bends I have have long legs on them I kind of have to piece stuff together all I have are just these these ends like this I didn't buy anything to be able to do this uh partly because I just wanted to show that you could do it yourself if you have the guts to cut up your old set of headers you can repurpose it you know got to buy a you know a $1,500 header kit if you don't want to uh could have it would have been easier to start from scratch this isn't the purpose of this and I didn't want to wait and what would I do with those headers anyway after I made new ones nothing sell them they're not worth really that much so whatever we'll repurpose them and now they'll be stepped just like these Dodge hiders are I don't know if that's going to change the sound I've been figuring out how to use this the fur markout Pro that Michael let us borrow super awesome dude this is like really neat you can kind of get it use it to get a reference on what the angles are so if you know you're under there and you got something that doesn't quite fit and you know need a little bit more of a gap you can say okay I'm going to if it's 50° I'm going to try 55 and see if that works then you at least you know what you're messing with instead of just eyeballing it it kind of helps you figure things out quicker I'm getting the hang of using this I've never used one before I did the Escalade all freehand and Shane's header all freehand I've never had any type of tools like that to use now I'm going to pull this out and measure the length so I know what I'm shooting for with the other ones and I'm going to put it on a piece of wire like um just like electrical wire and then I'll kind of use that to sort of rough up the general path that I need to take with the next one that way I kind of have some idea of where space needs to be occupied to get that length really this is about to be the hardest part is making every other tube fit and be the same as the first one when I really don't have that much room to work with under there anyway but let's pull this out of here and measure it up it looks pretty janky cuz it's all look like different pieces I had to basically to make this fit up right I had to tack a piece to here to get the Right Step Up spot so it was oriented correctly cuz when you're Landing under the car you can't get like you can't hold this piece in the flange and hold this perfectly to mark it so I just you know changed the size and then worked from here and this is the very end of the UB you can see it's got that line on there where it was like roll cut whatever and that's I had to use this little filler piece in there just kind of whack but the sound doesn't know the difference and then it up again to go into the collector so yeah it's pretty pretty long my margin for error as long as the longest and the shortest are within 5 in I'll be okay but as a precaution I'm going to shoot for within the same inch and then if I have to you know bend over backwards and set the world on fire to have it be an inch but it's within five like less than five we'll call it okay cuz that's um what most of the cup headers are are at acceptability WISE Mike said uh don't break your back for an inch cuz if theirs are within 5 in it doesn't make a difference cuz if it made a difference they would make them all exactly the same so I'm going to do the best I can and roll with it we'll see what happens I've never made equal length headers before only turbo headers I've never made full length headers before let alone equal length so this is this is a fabrication challenge for me and on top of that I'm repurposing basically old garbage so we're really doing it this time for those of you who are new to this channel either through the history stuff or the exhaust testing I'm not a noob it's not like I just never never picked up a welder before I did all this by myself years ago when I was like 22 I made these headers this whole Turbo System i Custom feed and these are actually the first set of headers I ever made that primary right there was the first tube I ever cut obviously these aren't equal length or anything but they get the exhaust into the turbos so that's really the only point of a turbo system I just spent probably 2 and 1/2 hours uh making notes and graphs and stuff to try to better understand the firing order and the orientation of the pipes so that because these collectors are removable I wanted to know what it would be doing if we'll say we use this one for example if we got the header straight up like this and it's in the car if we took these secondary collectors off and turned them so that instead of these two being paired these two were paired and the bottom ones were paired and change that around that way what is it going to do then well figured that out uh after a lot of work and kind of what seemed like riding down the same thing a bunch of different ways I finally made some sense of it by breaking it down by the the rotation like assigning a rotation number of degrees to each each cylinder in the firing order uh I also wrote down this the driver side one the primary that ended up being 27 and 3/4 in long so that's what I'm going to work with all kinds of crap going on here if you're still with me here leave a comment and tell me I'm not crazy or tell me I am I'd like to know I don't know what I'm doing but I feel like I'm figuring something out here that way I can put this on the put in the flange and then get under the car and kind of like see where the rest of it needs to go now is the incredibly fascinating process of tacking the pipe which is currently taped together I cut a little slice out that way I can tack it myself cut a little slice out peel some back press it together if it's gained any kind of Gap over the course of moving it around which apparently this one did because I had to kind of redo it with more tape and then I'll tack it and you know stick the tungsten to it which is not what you're supposed to do but sometimes that happens um flip it over cut a little slice out push the Gap in attack it and then it's you know that joint is good and then you do that for uh all of them this is how I've figured out how to do this so I don't have to have somebody hold it together for me and it still keeps its orientation without having any kind of cap so here's what we got going on on here you know when we're in here working in the shop it's hard for me to remember sometimes to eat or to eat what I'm supposed to eat ag1 by athletic greens is an athletic drink that's helped me simplify getting what I need throughout the day it has 75 different ingredients including vitamins minerals superfoods probiotics and adaptogens I don't eat anything green ever I don't eat enough vegetables I won't eat salad but I found when I keep up with this stuff I sleep better and I generally have more energy throughout the day without depending on you know caffeine and whatnot it's kind of like putting 87 into a car that you can run 93 on it's just not going to be as good no matter what you do you can't Band-Aid that with energy drinks it's extremely convenient too one scoop or one travel packet like this 8 O of water once a day that's it pretty good go to athletic greens.com Stapleton 42 to get started on your order athletic greens is going to give our community a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packets with your first purchase haven't set a hole lot cuz I'm in the zone but uh kind of got you know we got the one done three is not done five just getting attacked up now kind of going around through there seven is done see that one goes kind of straight down takes this long lick of through here and this one measures out to be uh like an inch longer than number one here but what I will do at the very end is if this ends up being the shortest one I can make it longer I'll add a little bit of a Bend to it cuz r one I took the straightest shortest shot to the collector now I got now number five is all marked up so I'm going to take that out and measure it and see where it lands in relation to the other two see if it's okay or if I need to change it kind of learning as I go here but I found that I was able to get number seven close by taping a um a wire in the length of like measuring the center of the radius running it down the number one primary I taped it the same way to seven and let it hang off the end where it wasn't done yet then I can kind of see just sort of play with it a little bit see okay if I make the pipe go down and then this way it's going to be pretty close at least that gets me close and it got me within an inch and a quarter on that one on this one so kind of did this one the same way let's pull it out see how it goes see I got it Mark there I'm going to take this tape off of here I had to tape that like that cuz when I was doing this it kept wanting to fold over and I'm going to tape this real quick so it doesn't move not the ideal way to tape it when it slips into the other ones on the straight pieces it just kind of fits in there and doesn't move but this one is a little bit different cuz it's a curve so let's get it out of here if we can I don't know boy great up the tape all right here we go all right now let's measure this thing I have been measuring how long the Run of 1 and 7/8 is before goes to 2 in so that's it makes the switch at the same point on each one this one I was able to kind of file the edge or sand the edge of this one the little tube a little bit and beat this little sleeve onto there or the other ones I had to tack it CU I didn't know I could do that but so the actual transition point is closer to here cuz it sled over so just measured this one and what I do is I forgot to film it I'll show you on a different one but you know take tape measure go around the outside and I have it marked here goes around so I can stop there and then restart measuring here so that it'll take me around the outside of this Bend to there where I'll stop and then recontinue measuring from here to there turn here to there that is how the uh fabricator from Morgan mcair told me he did it so when I measured it that way number five came out to 29 and 3/4 it's the same I did it now this one's too long but I can make that shorter if I have to we will see where number three lands right now got these all measured out every single one of them this one can kind of you know if you can play with it a little bit depending how you want to shove it so I have you want to measure both but for lack of a better explanation I just uh it can move anywhere between 32 and a/4 to 31 and 3/4 so I just put it at 31 on here just to mark it out real quick so there's where we got number five it's way down here 29 and 1/4 and 13 and 7 are all within an inch so these ones I'm okay with these being within an inch number five is kind of the outlier so be easy to put it all back in there bust it apart and add a little bit of length to it somewhere somehow and then everything will be within that one inch um if the spread from the other three was not that close if they were farther apart and there wasn't like one outlier then I'd probably leave it the way it was cuz like like Michael said the CB car header so sometimes have a difference up up to 5 in so don't worry about it but when they're that close it would bother me knowing that I could have had it that much closer and it won't really be that hard so what I thinking I can do is get it all back in there and maybe I'll break this Tack and add a little bit of angle outward to it break this one out too to cuz this is kind of sliit fitted in there I can get a little bit of distance out of here and it won't take much it won't take much to add half an in you know out here half an inch out there to to get it cuz you add a/ inch here it adds a/ inch over here whenever you make that into a Bend so that should push it right up into these I think like I said before this is my first four-way into building anything equal length like this but from the mechanics that I've seen so far I'm pretty sure that's going to work so redid this with a longer piece in here and we got it up to 302 so we gained a little over an inch from the old way now all four tubes are within an inch and a half of the same exact thing we'll take that and run now I got to figure out how tacked up I want to get these before starting the other side cutting the other one up cuz right now the other side is holding the exhaust there so I have a reference point of where the collector needs to be well I have been at this for several days now it may even be a over a full week since the last time I filmed the clip but just been grinding away got the passenger side pretty much done now um let's SLP down a little bit getting them all as equal as could possibly be equalness originally had the number eight primary was done but the way I had it snaking through here and then kind of curved back out and had to like do some weird stuff to get to there uh it ended up being 2 in longer it ended up being 32 in where everything else is hovering around 30 and it was done I could have finished while it I'm like you know the guy who did the Fab work for Morgan Mur I've been going back and forth with him like the dude that originally called Dr gas bought the xpipe and made that stuff um he been a big help with this he told me that that wouldn't affect the sound but that didn't sit right with me I'm like I got all seven of these things done the spread from the longest one to the shortest one is less than an inch and a half and then I got the very last one I do is 2 in not going to fly it's got to be right so I did that I pulled one segment out of it and was able to turn on the other ones and kind of close it back up we got it you see it gets kind of hairy whenever you're trying to make it out of cut up used pipe garbage but works pretty good so this is yeah this is the old measurement I got to cut that out see now it should be about 31 1/2 if I measure are correct 30 and 3/4 or something I don't know whatever it was it was shorter than number seven which is the longest one on the Spectrum the whole goal is to take the outliers and bring them in to have the tightest packed difference even though I was told it won't make a difference in the sound we are not leaving any Stones unturned cuz what I want to do with this is uh we can slide off the triy collectors we could slide on a 4: one we can test how far like having a 4: one right at the end of the primaries and then having 16 in of straight tube for the X and we can test having adding length to the primaries like sliding on like a really long 4:1 collector if you could picture that so that the collector they all converge right before the X and the primaries are just 16 in longer but they're still divided be very interesting sound comparison we will be able to do that with this because they'll all be within that equalness there so I could slide on another two and a quarter like I OD or whatever you know what I mean slide it on and then whatever if you can't picture that whatever you'll just see it when we do it but I think you're I think you're fing with this so let's let's throw this thing in here I get this fit in here get everything kind of mocked back up and then we'll roll the fronius Magic wave TIG machine over here and Tack all of the primaries to the flange kind of Orient them we'll get everything mocked up both sides just to make sure they're good because right now I only got two pipes over there cuz they always like to fall out so I'll get them all in there make sure they're all good and we'll finish weld them all and then tack weld them to the flange will be good like we're going to hear this thing pretty soon here you're going to get to hear it in a few minutes but I'm going to get to hear it in a couple days also we have these hats back in stock on stapon autoworks.com along with the black um along with the flex fit OG logo hat so check that out time to finish weld which means we got to pull pull all the primaries out I'm going to start with this one first cuz this is the harder side I don't know why this is kind of how I do that I'm going to finish weld the first pipe I made and then you know go and order kind to the last one don't know why but I haven't sat down and Tig welded stainless tube like this in almost 3 years now so it'll be a little rusty I'm sure and I've never done it with this this fronius machine I was doing with my old welder so that's another reason to start on the head of that you can't see very well big brain stuff and then I'll have everything figured out to do better on the one that you can see clear's day even though most of the welding is going to be done on the old ugly pipes from the original cutup header whatever doesn't matter it's going to sound cool we hope doing some more welding today I got my makeshift back purging rig set up here um it did not back Purge the first primary and half of the second one so I didn't think I'd need to but with the fronius um and the now that I got this furc cup here I can use more heat without burning the stainless out of the stainless which means now the welds fully penetrate where I've done some other stainless tube stuff before with when I have my cheep welder and the regular gas lens in it um if I made it hot enough to go all the way through the tube it was gray it I just didn't it couldn't work so I welded a low ampage well now I can do the whole thing and it was you know getting all the sugar and looks like black broccoli on the inside I'll show it to you on the other one so it also makes the weld bead better because the crud is not coming up from backside and making the puddle wander I don't know if you don't understand my terminology uh I'm sorry but you'll be able to see the difference when we're done here I just got a hose I didn't have a second bottle of back Purge either went and got one and you know jammed in some foil taped it up we got it filling up now and I got some new gloves in which uh old former hockey player tip I used to break my hockey gloves in by getting them wet and putting them on cuz it would kind of stretch the Lea out so I got these ones wet and stretched them out and then I put them out in the sun so they would shrink and then I do it again so it gets really form fitted to your hand cuz when you're trying to feed the tig Rod it's you know with big bulky gloves it doesn't work that well it's aggravating this is just straight up not a pretty process this has not been a particularly entertaining video to edit just cuz this is like just a bunch of nonsense it just you know oh no my tungsten's cruddy looking I'm going to clean it now and Tak more time and you just got to do 80 million stupid little things to make even half a step it is just so time consuming and so tedious that it's really…