Are those tig welded?

 

No, just our normal gas welding. TIG would add another $650.00 to the price. These 2" headers are priced at $872.00. TIG welding would bring the price up to $1,522.00, and for what? Other than being more "cosmetic", TIG welding has no added value.

 

♫...Do your headers hang low
Do they wobble to and fro
Can you tie them in a knot
Can you tie them in a bow

Can you throw them over a boulder
Like the beer in your cup holder

Do your headers hang low?..♫

 

I love this, you old coot...

 

I designed and built my own long tube headers. They are for a 302 based engine with a T5 installed in a Datsun 260Z. The frame rails and tunnel in a Datsun are much narrower than a Fox Mustang, and my engine sits much lower. The goal when I was designing them was that the bottom of the headers could not be lower than the lowest point of the stock bellhousing.

These are 1.75" x 0.049 stainless primaries going into slip on merge collectors. The merge section is 2.25" exiting into 2.5 inch. The throat of the merge is aligned with the edge of the bellhousing to allow the headers to tuck further up. I did all the fabrication and fit-up of the tubing, and created a fixture to hold all of the tubing in place while welding. I had my aircraft certified welding friend lay down the TIG welds. All of the welds are autogenous (no filler wire added).

Even building them myself, I have more than $1522.00 dollar in them.

 

Wow, beautiful. Much respect.
Do you have a build blog? Would love to see more pics of the Z.

 

Those are impressive

 

As far as headers for street/strip Mustangs, and with the emphases more on street than strip, and especially on the 302 engines (8.2" cylinder blocks), 1 3/4" headers (Long Tube or Mid Length) is more than sufficient. We have customers making 750+ HP using the 1 3/4" headers. On most Small Block Ford engines, the bottle neck is not the primary tube size as much as it is the cylinder head. All of the aftermarket cylinder heads for the SB Ford have 1.60" diameter exhaust valves. 1.60" is smaller around than 1 5/8" (which is 1.625"). But the exhaust does not go through a hole in the exhaust port that is 1.60" in diameter, it goes through the valve seat, which tapers down even smaller (not much larger than 1 1/2") before going out of the port. That's where the bottle neck is regarding exhaust flow. You can grind on the exhaust port all you want, but the "door" to the headers is still only 1.60" in diameter. This is why on a 302 engine, even the ones punched out to 347 cubes or bigger can do just fine using 1 3/4" headers as long as they are GOOD 1 3/4" headers...

 

I know this is an old thread, but how much would a set of 1-3/4 long tubes with a 2.5 inch collector diameter size run me? Must fit stock E7 heads per NHRA rules…

 

pretty much what I'm doing on the race car. Ford Maverick w/ Mustang II style front end. Biggest hurdle is the steering shaft as of right now but I think I have a fix for that. Second hurdle is finding the time to get anything done. Projects like this don't get done very fast when you have an hour a night after work.

 

Although the majority of headers that we offer are for FOX chassis Mustangs, we also offer headers for the '65 through '70 Mustangs with 289, 302, 351W (or Cleveland) and the 460 Big Blocks ('67 through '70 Mustangs). Because the early Mustangs are a little narrower between the shock towers, they are a special challenge.

The transmission cross member is much narrower than the cross member on the FOX chassis Mustangs, which forces the collectors to aim slightly toward the drive shaft in order to run a full exhaust system.

FOX chassis trans cross member.

Early Mustang trans cross member.

 

Am I the only one that thinks 2" primaries on a 302 STREET car are WAAAAAY too big. 1-3/4" if you are running some 351C 4V heads (but they kill low end power anyway). So what is the point or benefit of anything bigger than 1-5/8 if you are only 302 cubes. Sure 500+ cubes big block, go for it.

I'm sorry I don't get why one would need headers that big.

 

An interesting post, and yes, a 2" header is most likely too big for a street car with 300 cubic inches. Does he NEED headers that big? I don't know, maybe he does. I read what you have done to your Mustang (it's under your post). You have GT40 heads, did you NEED them? What was wrong with the OEM heads? You have higher ratio rocker arms and a Crower cam. Did you NEED more valve lift or did you just WANT more valve lift? You have a 70MM Throttle Body, why is that? Why did you get one bigger than 65MM? How did you know that you NEEDED a 70? My assumption is that the simple answer was that you were looking for more performance for your Mustang. There is nothing wrong with your stuff. There was nothing wrong with the stock stuff either, you just WANTED more, but the truth is that you didn't NEED more. Everything revolves around the word "the combination", meaning how do you drive your car, is it a race car or a street car? If you have a powerful combination, maybe TFS Hi Port heads, a very serious camshaft, and a 200 HP nitrous shot, and you do also race your car at the track, even if you only have 302 inches, you may want 2" headers. They would probably hurt you on the street, but help you at the track, and you might be willing to make that compromise. It's all about the combination.

Here's what I don't get. Spending money to purchase Shorty Headers that will give you less than 5 more HP. Did you really NEED them?

 

Wow. And that's why I don't have LT's on my street car. You can't even see my exhaust from the side of the car. Yikes!

 

Can't see the longtubes on mine from the side either.

 

Most street oriented 302 Mustangs need no more than 1 5/8" headers and they don't need long tubes. Mid or shorties are fine. From there they don't need anything more than 2 1/2" to their end. This will support more HP than most street cars will make. Some will respond better to larger setups, but for the majority of actual street cars 1 5/8" into 2 1/2" is fine.

 

While this is all true, it is not going to stop a lot of people from putting them on. It is the same mindset that has people putting steamroller rear tires on their race car. The car would probably be faster and quicker with a smaller tire, but it dose not look cool and they don't have to figure out how a chassis really works. So they go for the Wow factor instead of what works better.

 

Some good comments above from Kruiser, tjm73, and Saleen414. We live in a "Monkee See, Monkey Do" world. We are bombarded with nonsense on TV and on the Internet every day. As someone once said, "if you BS people over and over every day, there comes a time when they believe it". Yes, 1 5/8" primaries are fine for a mild street engine. Almost every single aftermarket cylinder head for the Small Block Ford has a 1.60" diameter exhaust valve. 1.60" is less than 1 5/8" (1.625"). Why would any mild 302 or 351W need a 1 7/8" or 2" header? I define "mild" as bolt-on stuff only, maybe a larger carb or throttle body, headers, etc. Basically a 300 to 350 HP engine. About Shorty Headers, I installed a set 34 years ago on my '87 Mustang. They were 1 5/8" which were somewhat better than the OEM 1 1/2". On the chassis dyno, I picked up zero horsepower, everything else being equal. I took them off and cut off the ball & socket part and welded on a 2 1/2" pipe (or was it a 2 1/4" pipe, I can't remember but it was the same size as the OEM exhaust system). Once I did that, back on the chassis dyno, and just doing that picked up 8 HP. Shortly after, they came out with the so-called "equal length" Shorty Headers. That was a con job, the primaries were NOT all the same length and even if they had been, the super tight radius bends were HP killers. Having daily access to a chassis dyno was a major advantage for me. I removed my OEM mufflers and tail pipes and installed a set of 2-Chamber Flowmaster mufflers. Other than getting a headache from the noise, I could not see any change in the horsepower. I removed the tail pipes again (and for the last time) and installed those little down-turns after the mufflers, and picked up about 4 or 5 HP. Little increments like this proved nothing, they were meaningless. For all I know, a 5 HP change, either up or down, could mean that nothing changed. It could all be just a change in the weather or temperature between 9:00 AM and 3:00 in the afternoon. Once I started making changes to the bolt-on stuff, I did the usual bigger changes, better cylinder heads, bigger camshafts, better intake manifolds, bigger injectors, bigger throttle body, the usual stuff, still nothing radical. It was my everyday street car still, but I went with Chris Kaufmann's "Speedbreeding" plan as outlined in Hot Rod Magazine. It was smooth as silk on the street and running in the mid 12's in the 1/4 mile with 3:73 gears. As far as headers, Gary Hooker (the founder of Hooker Headers) gave me a set of 1 3/4" Long Tubes. They had 3" collectors (and no ball & socket crap) and I used some adapters to fit them on the OEM H-Pipe.

Eventually, I gutted this car, (removed about 600+ lbs out of it) turned it into an all out drag car with a full cage, and still drove it on the street everyday. We must have tried a dozen different header designs on this car (headers that we built ourselves), always running through the mufflers, Long Tubes and Mid Lengths, in 1 3/4" and 1 7/8", trying many different primary lengths and collector styles. The drag strips were our new "dyno". It turned into a very nice 10 second car that was always fully streetable (although not smog legal in CA) and using pump gasoline. Steve Saleen liked the car, and "made" it into a Saleen for me and painted it white (all at no charge).

I donated the car to a Police Department in Antioch, IL, and they installed their logo and the light bar on it and raced it in the police car drag races, and used it in anti-drug campaigns...

 

Silly way to measure, but you CAN see my 3" exhaust (to the mufflers) from the side. Huh, look at that - you can see the OEM size 14" mufflers hanging from the OEM hangars. Next thing you know someone will see my tailpipes. Ooo lala - I'm so embarrassed!

 

I think that the bottom line on all of this is that your headers and exhaust system are just another part of "your combination". They have to fit together, with what you have "with the engine", and how you are going to "use" your vehicle. On my '87 LX above, even as an all out race car, we still relied on 1 3/4" primaries when trying out the Long Tubes or the Mid Lengths. The 1 7/8" Long Tubes I tried as an experiment did not make the car go any quicker or faster, although it might have if we used higher flowing cylinder heads and a more radical camshaft, and a higher capacity intake system. Ultimately, the engine is an "air pump", and the more air it flows, the more HP it's going to make, and the more exhaust flowing capacity it is going to need...

 

I wish I had the skills to have made these, but I don't and it was easier to pay someone else to do it for me
Tucked in nice and tight for ground clearance.

 

Ya gotta watch them ex-wives, George......