You are missing a few things. First off..the Chinese headers tend to be made in different factories with metals from different mills from one to run. The production goes to the cheapest bidding contract manufacturer. One run can be made in a factory that make surgical equipment. The next can be made in a cave in the woods of Mongolia somewhere. We have seen it here where one person's headers from the same Chinese brand look completely different from another. So what your set of headers happened to have, has no bearing on what someone else gets. Kooks on the other hand makes their headers in the same factory every time. All the stainless comes from the same mill less than a mile away.
You also missed my point on the thickness. What I am saying is for years Kooks and other brands have used the same 18 gauge tubing, and 3/8" flanges. This is designed from a race standpoint of wanting the lightest headers that do the job. The Chinese stuff initially tried to use that same gauge and thickness flanges had issues with warped flanges, and cracked headers from inferior materials. Then all the sudden all the tubing and flanges became thicker gauge. You only use thicker gauge because the quality of the lower gauge stuff was not holding up. I did not measure each one..but the differences are obvious...as the Chinese stuff is visibly thicker and heavier.
As for my credibility...I own both sets, have take pictures of them, and have had both sets on my car..and dyno tested them back to back. Not sure anyone else here can say that.
This is a no win...you obviously think you are an expert on the subject, and made the right decision. I think that while you may know a lot about metal or welding, but maybe not so much about headers. It is easy to apply your welding experiance to headers..but that does not mean you see the whole picture.
Quick story...I remember at a Camaro5fest, I had someone walk up, and go on about how he loved the welds on the set of Chinese headers in the booth. He was a welder his whole life, and knew this stuff inside out. Claimed the Chinese one's looked handmade, and the Kooks ones looked like they were made by a robot because of the weld beads or something. Was not possible for a human to weld that way. A Kooks rep who happened to be in the booth next to us came over and explained that they are made by hand on a rotisserie tool that the person had never seen.
As for the headers being the only cheap thing on the car, I see plenty of people around here that have Corsa Exhausts, CAI intakes, and ebay headers. There is some strange thing about headers that makes people who normally shop at Macy's go to the dollar store.
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Originally Posted by Mr. Unassailable
OK, i'll be done after this. You spent time on that reply, and I'll give you the courtesy of a reply to your statements.
1. Never said OBX or any "knock off" was better quality. I specifically said the welds were crap. But I also specifically said that I performed a PMI test on the metal and it is not crap metal. The elements in the metal are on point. I can't really explain it any better, but I'll try. Everything is made of elements, I have a tool (specifically, this one http://www.olympus-ims.com/en/xrf-xr...d/delta-alloy/) that is made to detect the elements in a material. I do not care where the ore came out of the ground, where it was smelted, where it was rolled or forged. If the metal has the same % of each element then it is that grade of metal. Here is a basic chart of what you find in 316/317 steel.
When you pull the trigger on that PMI gun it tells you EXACTLY what is in that material. Don't care how many sets of what brand you have on your car, if the things contain the same % by weight of each element, then the base material will last the same amount of time. The only factor would be if the headers were "normalized". But you would need to do so after installing them on the car and that would mean holding around 800°F under your hood for a few hours. I doubt anyone is doing this. They can tell you they "stress relieved" the headers at the shop, but at the shop they were not under any load yet. Stress relieving or normalizing (basically the same shit) is to take the material over its critical temp as to realign the grain structure after the part has been in this case bolted up.
So to finish #1, metal is metal. If the elements are the same % by weight, it doesnt matter where it came from.
2. The flanges on the OBX headers on my car are .43" thick. Kooks offers .375" thick flanges. So I'm not sure if you did you homework on that one.
3. OBX headers 16 gauge (1.5mm) kooks headers 18 gauge (1.02mm), not sure where you got "twice the thickness" from, hurts your creditability though.........
Now I'm done. |