Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines 235 headers

Hi! been lurking on this site for a while and have been unable to find good pictures of headers on a 235 C10. Specifically looking for underbody pics so that I have a good idea of how it looks and how much clearance there is and where and how the pipes are routed. It is for my 62 C10 short/step that is calling me from the garage, begging to be driveable this year... Thanks!

The best way is to bend them 'side-by-side' where the single was, going into the mufflers in the stock position.

From there; go back till your past the rear axle & aim them out & down.

If you want one on each side, do that to the rear of the axle so their not in the way when you do driveline work etc.

Patrick's has a "2 in 2 out" single muffler that's stainless steel that many like. Avoid the 'equalizer' pipe/tube. Use at least 28" "glasspacks" if you don't like his.

There's lots to choose from (mufflers) also.

Good luck.

and why not use an equalizer? I have a 235 with clifford headers and an x pipe right below the tranny and dual flowmaster 40's and it sounds great. plus balancing your exhaust via x or H pipe creates more HP by improving the scavenging effect.

and why not use an equalizer? I have a 235 with clifford headers and an x pipe right below the tranny and dual flowmaster 40's and it sounds great. plus balancing your exhaust via x or H pipe creates more HP by improving the scavenging effect.

and why not use an equalizer? I have a 235 with clifford headers and an x pipe right below the tranny and dual flowmaster 40's and it sounds great. plus balancing your exhaust via x or H pipe creates more HP by improving the scavenging effect.

Dear Mr. Bane;

The "X pipe" (theory) may work on the larger (400+ CID) V-8 engines, because they have a larger volume/number of exhaust pulses in a different configuration. There is some 'dyno data' to support it, but little.

This was developed so the EPA wouldn't ban "straight through" mufflers in their fight against 'noise polution'. I think GM put it on the Corvette to keep noise down too.

Our inline 6 engines have none of this to consider and history has shown that an "equlizer" defeats the purpose of headers on them.

In the 1950s Muffler Shops created this as a "quick fix" to traffic tickets for loud pipes etc.

Thanks everyone! Which style header would work best, Fenton style short tube or a long tube design?

The best would be the old original Fentons that bolted to the intake manifold and provided heat to the intake manifold. It may not matter much if your truck is mothballed during the winter.

The long tube headers don't improve the breathing much on a daily driver and the siamesed exhaust ports for 2 - 3 and 4 - 5 don't lend themselves to tuned lengths. The reason that crossover pipes aren't as effective on a Chevy six as they are on a V8 is that the exhaust pulses are evenly spaced on each manifold on the six, but are not evenly spaced on the V8.

The short tube headers are based on the Fentons, so it really doesn't matter which ones you use, performance wise. The tube ones are cheaper, but will rust out eventually, unless you get the stainless steel ones. Iron is better in the long run. Both have provisions for running heat tubes up to the intake, or you can run water to the bottom of the intake as well. There are plate kits out there for doing that. The early Fentons with the heat riser built in are very had to come buy and are very expensive if the seller knows what he has.

There was a test done in Hot Rod magazine that clearly demonstrated the differences between open headers, crossover pipe, no crossover, and X pipe. No crossover was the clear looser. As I see it, the more horsepower you make, the more benifit you get from it. Since a 235 makes a whole whopping 140 gross hp, a crossover might get you another 2 hp, but I think the main benifit for our inlines is in tuning the sound it makes more so than worring about the HP it makes.
A freind of mine has a '52 Belair with a stock cammed 235 with Fentons, Smittys, full tailpipes, crossover, and bazooka tips, and it has the best idle sound I've heard yet. About as close to a V8 as you'll get with 6 cylinders. It isn't as "quiet" as some would have you believe, once you wind her up a bit she'll bark nearly as loud as the true duals and glasspacks on my '53. I intend to add a crossover this year with a flanged connection in the middle so I can experiment with it to see how changing the amount of block off affects the sound.

If you run a muffler that has the two sides mixing together, then adding a crossover wouldn't make any difference, as the muffler is doing it for you allready. I noticed an "X" stlye 2 in 2 out muffler in my Jegs catalog the other day FWIW...

The farther forward the mufflers are, the louder it will bark ( with full tailpipes)

In the end its entirely up to you how you want to run your exhaust. There isn't enough performance difference one way or the other on a 216/235/261 to warrant a ****ing match....

Brian;

Please; don't waste your time/money on any experiments of this type. I've "been there done that" (late 60s) trying to get better performance out of the 261 & 292 engines in Tow Trucks. All that changes is the noise and the welds/flanges almost always leak/break. These systems (headers/pipes) help you keep the horespower you have (not add) with noise being a by product is all.

Think about what "baldy" said & remember 1 5 3 6 2 4. It's just that simple.

The V-8 data isn't relevant (apples-oranges) to this discussion/issue.

Martin in Sunnyvale, Ca.; just posted the "right way" to do it on Jan 4th here in 'engines' with pictures in & for ALL of us to see.... L@@k how the pipes (from headers) need to move (under body/chasis) separately??

Happy trails.

Try actually reading what I said and stop wasting my time.

"The farther forward the mufflers are, the louder it will bark ( with full tailpipes)"

Bryan,Is this because the longer pipe will resonate more or that with a muffler more rearward pressure is lost thru the exhaust pipe
thus softening the tone? Just curious as I've never heard(read) that before.




[/QUOTE]

Do you actually think people buy headers just to make noise?? That could be done with a 'straight through' (small) muffler & single pipe.

What do you hope to accomplish with a noise study??

I'm trying to SAVE your time and money here.

Drew,
I'm not an acoustical engineer, so I can't give you a scientific answer, but there are several guys on other websites, mostly the HAMB, that swear by this. Personnally, I'm not sure how, I only posted that to see what reaction it might bring. I suspect that it may be an issue of perception rather than reality. There are some interesting sites out there with exhaust info, but I couldn't find anything that would directly answer your question.

John,
Yes, alot of people do dual exhaust on sixes just to make that "special" sound.
A single exhaust will not make any kind of "interesting" sound no matter what you do with it.
As for your advise... Lets see... 40 years ago I tinkered with the exhaust on my tow truck, I didn't like it, so therefore nobody should do anything different than what I say. Wow, thanks for that advise. It was soooo helpful.
Apparently you didn't read what I said about my friends '52, or how it compares to my '53.
I'm trying to play with the sound, not the performance. Obviously by your replys you aren't getting the intend of anything I said. You only hear what you want to. Stop wasting my time.

If you think your time is being waisted here, take a vacation & relax. You've done great in the past. :rolleyes:

BTW: The (1969-71) study I was involved with used 10 trucks (2 of which were mine) and was over the above 3 year period. If that's "tinkering" where you live, so be it.

Either way; the crossover/equlizer defeats the purpose of headers, no matter where you are and this is first semister Auto Shop training, not just my idea of things.

Get some R & R!

Wow! This is just like the other forums I'm part of!

Walt,good advice. In the interest of separating sound from HP gains,perhaps someone somewhere has some dyno info. Might be interesting! good luck

I agree with Walt, but I would like to add another thought. Before any of us respond to a post we should read it at least twice to make sure we understand what the writer was saying and that we didn't miss anything. I have noticed many responses that the responder had obviously miss read the post.
I have been messing with engines since the fifties and have tried many different things and have discovered that things we believed as absolute fact then has been proved wrong now. A classic example that was tought in school text books was, man would never be able to go to the moon because he would expire from old age due to the number of light years it would take to make the trip. Also when I was a young man if someone would have told me that Japan would design a small four cyl car that could be modified to blow the doors off of a big block I would have thought they were nuts.

If you do decide that you want to install a balance tube on your system don't butt weld the pipes either cut the pipe and slot it so that it supplies more contact surface or take another section of pipe and make a plate over your joints this will allow the pipe to last till corrosion takes it apart.

Build it your way listen to old ideas add new ideas and hopefully you will come up with something that works better than all us "OLD TIMERS" ever thought about. If I had stopped everytime someone told me what I was trying wouldn't work, I would have missed out on a lot of things, some good some bad.
Becareful & Have Fun,
Big Bill

Personally,I prefer the smoother sound of a single pipe than the "rough" sound of duals on an inline 6.
I don't believe tuned tube headers offer any advatage on the typical built up vintage engine.Long headers are designed to work best in a somewhat narrow RPM range,good for a higher winding 250 engine or V type,but not necessary any advantage on a 4000 rpm Chevy 235-261 or old 270-302 GMC used for the street.In fact,the tuned headers can create unwanted tuning problems with carburation on lower rpm engines.
Fentons work just fine for most guys,I built my own short tube headers from scratch.With 3/8th header flanges I never had any leaks at the head.And I don't drive vintage stuff in nasty weather,so the headers rotting out isn't an issue,at least in my lifetime,lol.
I've also found the short length headers,Fentons or tube type, tie the two pipes in to one exhaust about a foot after the header connections,provides a smooth powerful power band with no tuning issues for street use.

I agree with you Walt. I started out just trying to expand on what had been said, and like usual, I have to deal with this crap and its getting old. Others have had to deal with it also.
John, nothing you've said helps in actually learning anything. You stated you did something, and thats it. Thats why you're "wasting my time". Got it??

Gentlemen,
If there's something in my postings that you are unsure of or think is wrong, Then ASK about it, like Drew did. Don't start railing, because you just might make youself look foolish.

I have experiemented a bit with exhaust on my daily late 235.

Basically, as previously mentioned, you want your exhaust to match and be optimized for your driving habits, as there is always a trade off and one type of exhaust will not be ideal for any condition.


For freeway driving I found open short pipes cut right under the cab allowed the engine to breath best and give most power at prolonged higher rpm.
Pipe diameter should be 2". You can add short non-baffled straight-through mufflers (steel or glass packs)to reduce the violent loud noise down to levels you can accept while driving.
24-30" is quiet, especially at high rpm when the pulses get smoother and more monotone.

For city driving the 235 with dual exhaust likes 1-3/4" pipe diameter and you can rout them over the rear axle and out the back.
This will give you better low end torque, after stopping and while accelerating.
Use whatever mufflers that sound good to you.

I also believe the closer the mufflers to the engine, the louder the sound.


I drive equally on freeways and in the city, so I have 2" pipes with 12" and 17" steelpacks.

For those interested, here's some interesting info

http://www.popularhotrodding.com/enginemasters/articles/hardcore/0505em_exh/index.html

according to BBK, on a stock 4.6 ford, an X pipe gives a DYNO PROVEN 12 to 25 hp, and 10 to15 hp from an H pipe, and 4.6L is much smaller than 400 cu in, so much for that theory. all I was trying to say is that an equalizer may not be a bad idea, and i think that its proposterous to think that thousands of people put them on their cars just to quite them down.

dbane261,

That is DYNO PROVEN on a V8, and more specificly, a Ford 4.6. As was stated before, inline sixes have evenly spaced pulses and V8's do not, so the benefits of a cross-over for scavenging would not be univesal. You would really need to show the dyno results of a 235 or 261 chevy engine with and without cross-over to prove any power increase for that type engine. Good sound is subjective and has nothing to do with performance; an engine can sound great and not perform worth spit and vice versa.

Thanks a lot guys!
Went to the Caribbean for a week and now I have a month of digesting info!!! Walt and RoadRunner, that is exactly what I was looking for! I want to go out the driver's side with both pipes under the step side step with chrome rectangular tips. Pipe size and muffler length and the style of headers were the unknown for me. Thanks all, and too bad it turned into a bit of a ****ing contest.
Roger

I have Fentons on my 62 c10. I bought the dual in/dual out muffler from Patricks a couple of years ago. I had a local shop install 2" pipes. The muffler is in the same location as the stock muffler. The tail pipes are routed over the axle and straight out the back on either side of the hitch. I love the sound. It's really pretty quiet at idle. It has different tones at different rpms and truly sounds musical. It really starts barking at 3k and sounds bad to the bone above that. And it is DEFINATELY my perception that the truck has more power with this exhaust vs. stock. No dyno needed.

John is right, there is nothing but the sound of a split exhaust straight throu (or glaspacks). PERIOD!
H or X Pipes quite down things a bit. PERIOD!

But when it comes to power there is the other side of the coin.

Most "Dyno Proofen" statements are of V8s.

I`m glad to say I tried it last week on a warmed up 261.
(.06 over, Bulldog cam, Clifford 4 barrel intake, Road Demon carb, tube headers)

Test 1: Old classic split 2" setup with glaspacks.
Test 2: New 2" setup with X-Pipe, Flowmasters.

Same engine, same day, nothing else changed.

8% more low end torque and HP with the x-pipe.
No significant difference over 3500 rpm.

Not what I expected but this is what the Dyno says.

Not sure how much the Flowmasters make a difference.

So we can say it helps but it may not be worth the money and work on a street machine.

Frank

Dear Frank;

If you continue your testing, you'll find the welds will crack & leak shortly too.

The pipes need to be separate, especialy on trucks.

For those of you who think this is a "contest", NOT so. It's the difference between theory and practice, with history as the proof.

NOTHING else.

mr C dan de lux, what was your best torque and hp figures on your 261, I am curious how well you did on the dyno, and are your results at the wheels

mr C dan de lux, what was your best torque and hp figures on your 261, I am curious how well you did on the dyno, and are your results at the wheels

Results at the rear wheels with the new x-pipe and flowmasters:

Best HP: 191 @ 4500 rpm
Best torque: 264 @ 2000 rpm

Torque @ 4500 rpm 226

Not to bad I think

Frank McGurk had a bit better numbers, but he did a lot of head work. I just milled the head (848-head) and did a new valve job.

Frank

Frank

John
If H pipes are properly cut, fit, and welds are properly reinforced along with the use of proper hangers they will last for years. I ran a government fleet for many years and never had a problem. The main reason that ford came out with them in the early sixties was to reduce noise it had nothing to do with emmissions or power. I used to drive a big block Ford with Straight pipes and no mufflers and never got a ticket for noise. The pipes had a "BALANCE TUBE" as ford called, it located just to the rear of the transmission mount. I have found that most pipe breakage problems come from improper mounting. A system has to be mounted so that it can flex with the contrasting movment of the engine and chassis.
If they are mounted to rigid something will break, coming back to ford they was having trouble with flange leaks/breakage at the convertor then they started using rubber supports hung from fixed posts on body and pipes and solved most of the problem, or at least slowed it down. You will also find flex joints used on semis to allow for movement between the cab, chassis, and engine. I have seen 5" pipe break in the middle of a straight and unwelded run when mounted to solid.

"Martin in Sunnyvale, Ca.; just posted the "right way" to do it on Jan 4th here in 'engines' with pictures in & for ALL of us to see.... L@@k how the pipes (from headers) need to move (under body/chasis) separately??"
Where can I see the above mentioned post please?, I looked in the back posts at that date ,,didnt see it there

Nortin:

I can't find it now either, so it must have been deleted.

It was on a Camero (I think) & ran out of a set of Langdon's cast headers, which ran separately to the mufflers (straight through) & out the back.

A really good job, but he complained of noise.

Bill:

Yes; It/they do reduce the noise and can be welded to not leak, especially with the wire feed welders many use today.

This isn't the issue here.

The whole point of headers/duals is to reduce heat and aid in "top end" performance, which is hampered by the co-mingled exhaust in manifolds and the 'single' muffler system, which came on most vehicles, beginning in the 1930s.

When "Hot Rods" are built 'max' power & acceleration is generally the goal and duals aid in that effort.

To co-mingle the exhaust with ANYTHING defeats the whole purpose and is counter productive, any way you look at it.

My Stock 1956 Ford had duals from the factory that ran straight to the mufflers and were quiet because they used the 'proper' mufflers and no 'crossover' was needed.

Sure there will be a 'low end' improvement when you take it away from the 'top end' which wasn't the goal to start with. Really now; Nothing is gained by running the exhaust around in circles?

So; You make the system one way or the other. You can't have it both ways and to try is a waste of time/money/effort etc.

I have explained ALLL of this before & why it was done that way for the EPA in the 70s.

Happy trails.

Hi guys. Here are the requested pics.




I did not use an x-pipe. Hope these help.

Thanks for re posting pics strum ,I think I just had names mixed up ,These can also be seen on the thread titled "One Step At A Time" Nice application !!

Gentlemen;

That's the way to do it (like Martin) except in a truck, keeping them on the same side seems to work the best.

If your concerned with noise, just use longer mufflers. There's lots of room (more than car)under a truck.

"Is this in any way unclear"??.....Billy Zang.

Thanks for the pics! I guess with a 62, both pipes would be best placed on the driver's side and then split at the axle if I wanted that look.

After seeing Bluesky's exhaust pics http://home.rmci.net/blueskies/02-engine.html
I wanted to run mine on the same side but there wasn't enough room in my case. They look and sound good either way.

Just to clarify, There is no support for the opinion that a balance pipe will hurt performance in any way. It's not a "Y" pipe or a log style exhaust manifold. With an "H" pipe, The only way exhaust could travel across from one side to the other is if the one side had a higher pressure in it than the other side. Even then its only half the difference in pressure between them. Thats why its called a "balance" or "equalizer" pipe. Because of the way the six fires, as Eagle points out (and I never dissagreed with), the difference between them is much smaller, hence the thought of some people that it won't help performance by installing one. BUT, This does not mean that you can assume that the exhaust is automatically "tuned" or "balanced", as there are several things that can cause one side to run a little different than the other such as, (at least with Fentons) the two manifolds are not exactly alike, the connection between the Fentons and the pipes are different and the length of the head pipes may not be the same. Because of all this, as I stated before, you MAY get a little more out of it by running a crossover pipe. It certainly won't hurt anything to try it. Going by the graph that was posted by Road Runner, assuming those old McGurk stats are realistic, dual exhaust is only good for 4-6 hp. Because of the low improvement, anything you do get will be very small, which is why I wasn't worried about the performance angle. Franks tests show that a small improvement is possible, although wether its the different mufflers or the "X" pipe or a little of both, we can't say for sure. For me, I'm just tired of my dual glasspacks sounding like a Honda with a fart can (only alot louder). My friends '52 has been running a crossover for as long as I've known him, about 8 years maybe, and he hasn't had any issues with it. As bill says, its all in how you mount it.

Speaking as the Moderator, I do not engage in contests. ITS MY JOB to point out and correct errors on this site, period. If that makes me the bad guy, then so be it.
A truely wise person knows they are not too old to learn, or that they know everything. When you stop listening and questioning, then you stop learning as well.