High Performance Exhaust Headers

Yes, you already know that you should get an high performance exhaust header, but do you know why? Exhaust headers are one of the easiest ways you can improve your engine's performance.

To understand why you need an aftermarket header, you need to know what happens in your car's combustion chamber.

1. Intake stroke:

The piston first starts at the top of the cylinder. The intake valve opens to let the air into the cylinder. The piston moves down, creating a vacuum that lets the cylinder get filled with the mixture of air and fuel.

2. Compression stroke:

The piston then moves up again. This compresses the mixture of air and fuel. This compression is necessary to make the next stroke, the combustion stroke, more potent.

3. Combustion stroke:

While the piston is at the top of the cylinder, the spark plug gives off a spark. This spark ignites the air and fuel mixture and creates an explosion. This explosion is what drives the piston back down.

4. Exhaust stroke:

When the piston gets to the bottom of the cylinder, the exhaust valve opens. This sucks the exhaust out of the cylinder to exit out of the exhaust piping.

How does the exhaust header fit into this equation?

After the exhaust stroke, the gases from all of your cylinders passes into the exhaust manifold, into one pipe, through the catalytic converter, through the exhaust muffler, and out of the tail pipe.

Your cylinders are not firing at the same time. This means that your exhaust is being passed out of the cylinders and
arrives in the exhaust manifold at different times.

These variations causes the exhaust gases to build up and become turbulent, thus creating backpressure.

Backpressure keeps the exhaust from flowing freely out of your cylinders, into the exhaust manifold, through the catalytic converter, through the muffler, and out of the tail pipe. You want as LITTLE backpressure as possible because it robs you of power!

These collector style headers are made of tubular steel that is cut and bent so that they are all the same length. The exhaust header is used to collect the exhaust gases from each of your cylinders, INDIVIDUALLY, pass them into the collector, through the catalytic converter, through the muffler, and out of the tail pipe at the same time.

Your car usually comes from the factory with a header or manifold that does the job, but it does not give you that
'extra'. This is because at the factory, they focus on the cheapest way to make the exhaust header. They are usually
small, restrictive, and do a poor job of pulling the exhaust from the engine. Aftermarket headers focus on enhancing the flow of your exhaust system in order to decrease backpressure and increase horsepower.

Zoomie style headers have no collectors and are only used on race cars. Honda's J Engine series includes the J30. The J30A4 uses an integrated engine block passage that sends the exhaust directly to your catalytic converter instead of your exhaust manifold. The J30A4 engine was used on the 2003-2005 Honda Accord V6.

2003-2006 Import Rival