Thread: lakester headers

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Here's some humor showing I can laugh at myself and maybe give a message at the same time. Back in my Dune Buggy days I had a beautiful set of chromed headers on a 1600cc VW engine in a gold metalflake Sand Rover. One morning I got stopped by a patrol car and issued only a warning by an officer who liked the car but noted that the exhaust was not "stock" and that I better quiet it down ASAP! So that very day I cut the bottoms out of two aluminum beer cans, noting that they would hide in the ends of the header bell throats and drilled three holes in each header outlet at about 120 degrees apart. Then I stuck a Brillo pad inside each header bell and bolted on the beer can bottoms and drilled about ten 1/4" holes in the beer can bottoms. That quieted it down nicely and I was very pleased with my innovation. About three days later I noted the noise was back and there were threads from the Brillo pads streaming out the holes in the beer can bottoms. Upon taking off the beer can bottoms I found there was almost nothing left of the Brillo pads (in just three days driving)!. The moral of the story is that any packing material whether steel or fiberglass has to be held by some sort of internal structure and that the actual pressure of the exhaust is quite high! So maybe some sort of washer welded in or some sort of "Trapp-type" spiral baffle might work, but it has to be sturdy to handle the heat and pressure of the exhaust. Soon thereafter I was rear-ended in traffic and the headers were destroyed but the insurance replaced them with a very heavy gauge Swedish set of headers which had some sort of sturdy baffles and the sound from the new headers was really just music to the ear! Sooo, beer can ends might fit but I have proved they don't do the job right! For me that's a LOL! For what it's worth, I recall that after the Brillo pads were gone the perforated beer can ends were on the car about nine months before I got the new headers and the beer can baffles even survived state inspection, but surely the purpose of headers is improved flow so it seems silly to deliberately block them and maybe a spiral insert is the best answer.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder