Automotive Repair Services

Header Fabrication

Here at AutoCade we have partnered with D & S Fabrication for all our Turbo Header and Exhaust Header design or fabrication needs. They design, mock up, and weld tubular exhaust headers using the icengineworks precision exhaust header modeling system. Their 3D header fabrication kit is so flexible and universal it can be applied to develop tubular header systems for almost any internal combustion engine. We can use it to build headers for the most exotic forms of professional international racing, to the best-in-class show car, hot rod, rat rod, street bike or the fastest funny car, down to the street rod in the garage down the block. Karts, V-twins, 2-strokers, 4-bangers, V6s, V8s, V12s, twin-turbos, blown engines, you name it, your imagination is the limit to find applications for your dream exhaust header systems that can now be easily designed and built by us here at D & S Fabrication. If you need custom specialty headers for your exotic race car, or your dirt track racer, dragster, pro-street, pro-mod, speed boat, or marine header application...come see us and let us put our specialized fabrication services to the test. The only requirement for us to start designing is to install the actual header flanges with starter tubes, or stubs in the tube diameter you want us to use for your design and build. When the modeling blocks are assembled they form strings that serve as 3D models of actual primary runners. By carefully choosing and positioning each block added to an assembly, while keeping track of the length, our designers quickly discover the most optimum pathway between the header flange and the collector. If interferences are found along the way, the blocks simply get rearranged. This new design capacity to do and undo freely, opens up an unprecedented opportunity to quickly create more efficient, tighter and seemingly more complex designs. And the savings due to unnecessary labor and wasted materials start piling up right away. It is now possible to design, revise, correct and rearrange, almost endlessly, at no extra cost, without waste, any design requirement until every aspect fits and feels right. J-bends, U-bends, V-band flanges, header flanges, are all it takes to turn designs modeled with plastic blocks into a full metal version unless it's a turbo header. Then of course turbo flanges such as the T3, T4, T6, and Mitsubishi inlets may be required. By utilizing precision U-bends, or J-bends of matching CLR, available from exhaust components suppliers like Burns Stainless, Stainless Headers or SPD Exhaust, it is very easy to transfer your design model into metal, section by section. Our most recent build was a 321 stainless steel turbo header with a 4 into 1 merge collector and a downpipe for the wastegate. We did check and make sure that the waste gate exhaust flow had a clear and unrestricted flow either to the atmosphere if using a dump tube, or back into the exhaust system. This particular setup will be fed back into the exhaust system. After modeling up a few custom turbo manifold designs incorporating the external waste gate and tweaking each runner to perfection we one at a time, we replaced each model block section with their metal version by aligning witness lines and tack-welding. We continued until the entire design was completely tacked. After tacking the mandrel bends (u-bends and j-bends slices) we back-purged and TIG welded the entire assembly including the header flanges, starter tubes, equal length runners, merge collector, v-band flanges, and external wastegate turnout (turndown). The customer will use a boost controller on his turbocharger to prevent boost spiking (over boosting).