exhaust

[alongcameaspider]

I have been looking at the engine bay gallery and I think the exhaust on my car must be aftermarket , the muffler says ANSA and it appears to have headers, not the standard manifold i see in some of these pics or were the headers a factory option?

[124JOE]

i dont believe so
i bought headders a stock center and ansa muff
it sounds good

[124ADDHE]

2 of the 3 fiats i bought had aftermarket headers already installed. I think sometimes the cast iron can crack on the originals; i have 3 cracked original headers.

[AndyS]

you mat want to remove that header wrap. it will ruin your header in short order. overheats the metal and cracks will develop all over the place. ask me how I know.

[124JOE]

without the wrap i melted the over flow bottle
and was baking the hood

im not loosing the wrap
i just put it on
and it wasnt cheap

[So Cal Mark]

any header mfg will tell you that any warranty is void if you wrap the headers. The wrap retains moisture and will ruin the header quickly. Their are alternatives to the plastic bottle and that route is much cheaper than ruining headers

[narfire]

I'll concur about the wrap. I wrapped mine and after a month or so I had reason to adjust it and underneith it had started to rust. Took the headers off and had them and the down pipes ceramic coated and bought the metal overflow bottle from Mark. I also used some wrap that had velcro closures to wrap the heater hoses and over flow hose. Three/four years later no issues
Chris

[TX82FIAT]

Some of the FI guys including myself have opened up small holes to the right of the passenger headlight behind the grill. this feeds cold air into the intake. using a heat gun this also decreased the temperature in that part of the car consistently by 10 to 13 degrees. I would imagine on a carbed car this would help circulate air better and help keep the area around the header cooler as well. Wrap it to insulate or fan it to keep it cool. If you can channel cold air to the intake then you can channel cold air towards the exhaust.

[124JOE]

i ran without the wrap for 6 yrs it was rusty
i pulled it and repainted with headder paint then wraped it and painted that
the paint needed to bake on to the headder but the wrap is over it
so when im driving i get some paint smells still

[maytag]

I've used header-wrap on cars and motorcycles for years. many, many years. I have never had a header become damaged by rust or cracks or other due to wrapping them. As a matter of fact, I've had stainless headers that were like new when unwrapped after 3 years of being wrapped.

But we can't discount those who have had different experiences.

I would suspect that the key is probably to not let moisture get into the wrap without subsequently being heat-cycled out of it. But this would be true of any exhaust system, wrapped or not; if you make short trips where the condensation in the exhaust does not have opportunity to evaporate or 'cook-away', then you'll rust from the inside-out. IF you are using your car in a manner that allows the exhaust to get to temp, and the wrap as well, then your problem is gone.
That's just my guess... I'm neither a meteorologist nor a metallurgist.

And use a quality wrap. there is some crap out there. most good wraps will use a volcanic-rock product that is woven into carbon fibers. Neither product will absorb water.

[AndyS]

you might be able to get away with it on a stainless header, but not a regular steel one. The Ansa on my Fiat 128 literally started to disintegrate after about 10,000 miles.

[maytag]

you might be able to get away with it on a stainless header, but not a regular steel one.

ok... but I have. I've used wrap on regular steel headers before with zero issues.

Is it possible the ANSA header sucks?

This is interesting to me, because I'd love to find a pattern on the success / failure of headers that have been wrapped. is it a function of quality of build? or type of driving? or environment?

I'm in Utah. EVERYTHING rusts here. and yet, I've never had a header failure due to header-wrap. But I don't tend to use those types of vehicles (where I would wrap a header) as a "grocery-getter", so I would be thoroughly heat-cycling it. is that why I've had success?
I dunno. just spit-ballin'

[AndyS]

http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=ch ... 80&bih=909


people have had oil get into the wraps and catch fire, lots of stories of cracked headers from the metal getting over heated,. read it and weep. main consensus is real ceramic coating is the only was to go for heat reduction.

[maytag]

http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=ch ... 80&bih=909


people have had oil get into the wraps and catch fire, lots of stories of cracked headers from the metal getting over heated,. read it and weep. main consensus is real ceramic coating is the only was to go for heat reduction.

dood....
You're sending me info that you found by googling "header wrap failure", what did you THINK you would find? If you google "ugly women cook better", you'll find lots of that stuff too.

All I am saying is that my FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE (and many, many others) differs from what you're saying. And I'm wondering why that is? Do you have any first-hand experience with header-wrap that we could use to compare scenarios and try to see a pattern of success vs failure?

[124JOE]

ill try to let you know after 10,000 miles