Pics of my cracked headers | Page 2 | FerrariChat

Pics of my cracked headers

Discussion in '348/355' started by Tape32, Nov 28, 2017.

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  1. POLO35

    POLO35 Formula Junior

    Feb 21, 2005
    712
    Treasure Coast Florida
    Full Name:
    MATT
    I completely agree with Nader. It absolutely has to do with driving habits and how this car was treated from previous owners. My 348 is a MINT 3 owner car and was babied and not driven aggressively...headers are fine clutch is fine everything's fine. People who choose to drive these cars like a Formula 1 racer, redlining for protracted periods of time, things fail.. brakes, hoses, headers clutches Etc.
     
  2. taz355

    taz355 F1 Veteran
    Owner Silver Subscribed

    Feb 18, 2008
    5,942
    Indio Ca/ Alberta
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    Grant
    My 99 original cats failed after 7 years, my hyperflows have been on 10 with. O problems.
     
  3. taz355

    taz355 F1 Veteran
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    Feb 18, 2008
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    Grant
    I diagree with Nader, poor maintenance and lack of fundamental understanding of the systems while assuming sdl are just what happens when you drive the car hard is what causes the header problems.
    Obviously combined with poor original headers.

    Put on good headers, a hyperflow style designed cats, and any muffler and drive the car as hard as you like and you wont have these problems with engine or headers.
    Also follow good maintenance.
     
  4. jimmym

    jimmym Formula 3

    Sep 30, 2008
    1,967
    Northeast U.S.
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    Jim
    I agree with Hugh and Grant in regards to the headers. Thin, poor quality stainless, surrounded by insulation and a clamshell, and primary tubes that are very close to each other is most likely the primary reason for failure. You don't hear of aftermarket headers failing that often. There could be other running issues that could contribute to the engine running hotter which would worsen the situation.
     
  5. itsablurr

    itsablurr Formula 3

    Dec 9, 2005
    1,006
    Carlisle, MA
    Full Name:
    Matt
    Root cause is header design and material spec. Use of the motor within its operating range is not the root of the issue.

    Not exercising and running these motors hard invites its own host of issues. The healthiest motors are the ones that have been maintained and used regularly through their full operating range. Not sure how redlining would cause brake failure, or hose and clutch failures in a properly maintained car.
     
  6. Dave rocks

    Dave rocks F1 World Champ
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    Nov 23, 2012
    16,047
    Orchard Park, NY
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    Dave Lelonek
    Get a set of Tubi and call it a day ;)
     
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  7. POLO35

    POLO35 Formula Junior

    Feb 21, 2005
    712
    Treasure Coast Florida
    Full Name:
    MATT
    I was just referring to aggressve driving in general. Being hard on clutch, shifting, brakes, suspension....etc. My old 328 was driven very aggressively....service history revealed over the years 2 cracked flywheels, cracked pressure plate, warped rotors, suspension issues, A.c. comp....Think about an a.c. compressor at 7500 rpm in July when its 100 degrees in the shade. I mean come on...these cars are 25+ years old!
     
  8. johnk...

    johnk... F1 World Champ
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    Jun 11, 2004
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    John Kreskovsky
    Totally bogus.
     
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  9. itsablurr

    itsablurr Formula 3

    Dec 9, 2005
    1,006
    Carlisle, MA
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    Matt
    John, are you suggesting that 348s and F355s driven in an overly gentle manner are not subject to a greater and more rapid accumulation of carbon deposits as opposed to one that is operated with more enthusiasm over the rev range?
     
  10. johnk...

    johnk... F1 World Champ
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    Jun 11, 2004
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    John Kreskovsky
    I'm suggesting that constantly driving "enthusiastically" creates more wear and degradation of the engine in other respects. Every aspect of wear increase superlinearly with RPM. Belts are more likely to fail when taken to high RPM. Same with bearings. Drive a mile at 50 mph with the engine at 2.5k. Drive a mile at 50 mph with the engine at 5k. Right there you have twice the wear just because the engine rotated twice as many times. Now consider that all things like pistons and valves are accelerating twice as fast. That means the forces on those components is at least twice as great. Loading on cam lobes at lease twice as great. Friction forces will be greater. Valve guides wear faster. Heat generated in the engine will be greater, oil breakdown will occur faster due to higher temperatures and greater shear.
     
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  11. 308 GTB

    308 GTB F1 World Champ
    Rossa Subscribed

    Feb 7, 2002
    11,166
    New Jersey
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    Barry Wolinsky
    Well, here's one of the camshafts on my 550 at 60,000 miles which included ~8,000 track miles. It looked like it just came out of the box. The car was meticulously maintained and has been for the 15,000 miles I put on it since...


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  12. Enzojr

    Enzojr F1 World Champ

    Dec 12, 2013
    14,001
    West of PDX
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    Tomy
    Popcorn time ;)
    Drive it, don’t drive it .......
    Baby it, run the piss out of it ........
    Jesus H ...... I have only been here a few years and am tired on this subject.
     
  13. johnk...

    johnk... F1 World Champ
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    Jun 11, 2004
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    John Kreskovsky
    Carbon build up is enevitable. It's the result of oil getting past rings and seals and overly rich mixture with incomplete combustion. Running the car a high RMP and full load will help remove excess buildup, but running "enthusiastically" all the time won't prevent it. Short bursts at WOT contribute more to build up than driving casually with throttle applied as needed. Short burst dump excessively rich mixture into the cylinders with result is incomplete combustion.

    FWIW, here is a picture of my 95 pistons after 20k miles. I can not be 100% sure of how it was driven, but knowing who the owners were and that it is a 95 who's valve guides survived 20k miles, I'm relatively sure the car was not driven aggressively very much.

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  14. Tape32

    Tape32 Karting

    Apr 23, 2011
    50
    Las Vegas NV
    Full Name:
    Scott
    Jimmy, your headers are what encouraged me to use GP Headers. I was going to use REF in Kingman, Az. but since Zak had already had experience and built the jigs for these headers it made the decision easy. The shields were a pain to remove, the flange gets mangled drilling out all of the spot welds. James had a better idea with the plasma cutter. I'm still not sure exactly how Zak is going to close these back up.
     
  15. jimmym

    jimmym Formula 3

    Sep 30, 2008
    1,967
    Northeast U.S.
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    Jim
    I am not sure how many Zack has built since mine, but I believe he has done quite a few. When he was with Chris at Stainless Headers they purchased a metal fab tool for the shields. I have never heard of REF but am going to check them out.

    When they did my set, they were a second set that I purchased from Bradan for this project as I wanted to keep my original ones intact. The shields weren't attached to the ones I purchased. The tubes are a little bigger so they had to fabricate a lip to get the shells to close.
     
  16. itsablurr

    itsablurr Formula 3

    Dec 9, 2005
    1,006
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    Matt
    Great pics, Barry.

    John, I have never seen any cases reported on here of bearings and cams and valve seats being replaced due to excessive wear from an enthusiastic driving style, if you've seen a trend, please share. These cars have seen a wide range of uses and operating conditions over a long period of time. I'm not saying that there isn't *technically* more wear at some infinitesimally small measurable level, rather that I have not seen when you are purporting manifest in any meaningful real word servicing events. Belts and fluids are typically on a schedule to be replaced well before their service life is exhausted on these cars in any case at 3y/annual.

    As you say, 'running the car at high rpm and full load will help remove excess buildup', so we agree there. The presumption based off of that is that cars that do not see that high rpm and full load will not remove that excessive buildup, and that is the supported position by many experts across the industry, including my own car via John Tirrell. I didn't see anyone arguing that carbon will not occur in certain cases, and will in others. Of course it is a phenomenon across all engines, that is stating the obvious. The difference is the operating conditions can have a tempering effect on that, again which we both seem to agree. That has a much more immediate and detectable impact to the operating health of the engine, which was my initial point.

    Anyway, back to the subject of cracked headers...
     
  17. 308 GTB

    308 GTB F1 World Champ
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    Feb 7, 2002
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    Thanks, Matt. But before we get back to headers, here are some cam lobes on my F355 Challenge at 12,750 Challenge Series and SCCA miles. The car was driven as hard as it could go during that time. No excessive wear was noted...


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  18. johnk...

    johnk... F1 World Champ
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    But what do the piston tops and valves look like? :)
     
  19. Dave rocks

    Dave rocks F1 World Champ
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    Well, visually that's true. But, it's a hardened cam shaft and without measuring it you won't really know ;)
     
  20. 308 GTB

    308 GTB F1 World Champ
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    Leak down numbers were good. There was no reason to delve into that.


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  21. Tape32

    Tape32 Karting

    Apr 23, 2011
    50
    Las Vegas NV
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    Scott
    REF does a lot of NASCAR stuff. The owner actually travels to different teams headquarters and builds headers on site for the team.. They did a turbo system for a friend years ago, the work was nothing short of art. They are one of the best in the business.
     
  22. jimmym

    jimmym Formula 3

    Sep 30, 2008
    1,967
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    Jim
    I checked them out. Their work looked nice. If you can build nascar stuff, you can build any header.
     
  23. Challenge

    Challenge Formula 3

    Sep 27, 2002
    1,933
    PA
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    Funny. I was about to comment that this was the most true statement on the thread. Exercising these cars frequently after proper warmup is the best thing you can do to keep them running strong. This is not always correlated with minimizing all wear.
     
  24. cf355

    cf355 F1 Rookie

    Feb 28, 2005
    4,208
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    chris
    agree
     
  25. taz355

    taz355 F1 Veteran
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    Feb 18, 2008
    5,942
    Indio Ca/ Alberta
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    I am strickly discussing the engine.
    Not sure what John was suggesting but I agree with his statement.
    That being said he did not say they wareout just that they have more ware at higher rpm.
    I think thats a valid and obvious statement.
    That being said I agree with the statement that proper warmup followed by normal driving 90 percent of the time and wfo the other 10 perccent will not hurt anything. I have only seen possitives of working my engine hard sometimes with less carbon buildup.
    I dont think we are trying to say that 8500 all day long is a good thing. I for one believe it s designed for this to a certain extent. If it was not then others would not be getting 100 thousand out of them.
     

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