Best brand? DEI?
Where to find best price?
Will it stick to polished aluminum? i.e. intake piping?
Any dyno's out their - many companies claim gain in horsepower - could be slight, but I would like to see results.

Thanks, post away...

 

you wouldnt notice a gain in horses from header wrap, the only purpose it holds, is to keep the heat inside the headers without allowing a higher temp under your hood (for ur intake)... and it should hold onto any surface, i would wrap it tighter if your headers are polished, just in case it starts to slide....




[Modified by LSyellowREX, 2:24 AM 5/23/2002]


[Modified by LSyellowREX, 2:25 AM 5/23/2002]

 

You know I was thinking, logically, wouldn't the trapped heat help emissions by heating the cat up quicker?

Sorry to go off-topic.

The wrap should not give you gains unless it cools down the engine bay by a phenomenal amount, which in turns lowers the intake temp. Using the assumption-ometer, I'm guessing + .75 whp.


[Modified by iloveracing, 10:02 PM 5/22/2002]

 

Supposidly, the difference in heat helps exhaust scavanging.

 

i have my header wrapped and it works well............you can work inside the engine bay without burning you hands on the manifold and it keep some of the heat out of the engine bay.

 

So technicaly heat wrap on an intake piping would do the exact oppsite - keep heat out - where can I get some heat wrap for cheap? Local auto stores are $35+. Thanks.

 

Hey all. To answer your question, you can make your own insulating wrap -- that's what I did. It's simply fiberglass. I used house insulation for my header wrap, worked fine -- only draw-back was a horrible stench created by the burning dye in the insulation. You can also use regular old fiberglass matte too. Just go get some aluminum tape to wrap it all up with.

The gains were minimal... HOWEVER, every little bit helps. For a street car, I'd say there is no point in ruining the looks of a beautiful engine bay... but for an all-out race engine... why wouldn't you do it?

One draw-back however. Fiberglass does eventually corrode the metal. Stainless holds up best, but I had scars on my metal when I took my header wrap off. Theres no way around it -- the extreme temperatures created by the header wrap allows the fiberglass to eat at the metal. Anyway, hope this helped.

 

Ummm...the header wraps that are produced by the big companies are composites and aren't 100% fiberglass.

Header Wrap works this way...

It's is insulating your header, which on one hand keeps the temps in the engine bay lower...although this just happens to be a side benefit, and not it's real purpose(although it does work great). The real purpose of the header wraps is to keep the heat inside the header, which keeps the temps higher inside the header, which allows a faster moving exhaust flow...which in turn gives you a freer flowing exhaust system, thus you receive minimul HP gains....understand?

I wrapped my JDM itr header that was on my last car...which was a real bitch, on my HyTech I sent it off to HPC Coatings, which I prefer after spending all the time wrapping the header and dealing with itchy hands.

I just wrapped my intake tube to help insulate it from the engine temps as I have the Comptech Aluminium intake and it was getting a little warmer that I liked.

Austin

P.S. - I have only used Thermo-Tec wrapping...cheapest is to purchase it from Summit Racing, or Jegs Performance.


[Modified by Austin, 11:24 AM 5/23/2002]

 

in my experience.... headers cool off much faster than any other engine part.
so header wrap would slow down that process...

I have noticed that I can grab hold of the header ... and it will only be warm..
but if I touch the head... or the valve covers... I will get burned

 

all the other comments are valid, only no one seems to have mentioned that the extreme heat your headers now endure can cause them to warp and maybe crack, or if you disconnect them they won't go back in place,still like they say every bit counts

 

I used DEI wrap for my DC 4-2-1 CC two piece header. I think the roll was about $35 for a 50' roll, which is more than enough to wrap a header. The wrap looks like a 2" wide cloth band impregnated and woven with fiberglass, and doesn't stick to anything really. You have to clamp it down on both ends - get some of the good quality stainless 2 1/2" hose clamps from a supply store (Home Depot). After wrapping it correctly (1/4" overlap) and clamping it I went ahead and used some DEI HT silcone coating on the wrap ($8+ in a spray can) to help fuse the wrap together and provide some water resistance.

No real horsepower gain for obvious reasons, but you can touch the header without getting burned. I didn't hear the DC header exhaust sound without the wrap installed (as I put the wrap on my new DC header, sprayed it with the DEI HT silicone coating, and installed it) but have heard that it quiets down the exhaust system noise some. Once you got the wrap on run the engine and let it idle for a while...then go grab a gas mask and take it out for a loooong drive... You really need to drive it for a good while to smoke out the wrap really good, just idling it for a while won't do the job... And that's the bad thing about header wrap - when you come back from that "burn-in" trip you will have a huuuge headache.... unless you take a gas mask...

 

Great info. Thanks guys!

 

so would wrapping a turbo manifold do any damage to it?