Headers, better is possible

[mike kojima]

Why do most aftermarket parts break? Do you know how
many people would be willing to pay for OEM level
engineering and development at aftermarket volumes?
Probably no one.

Part of my job is reviewing the durabilty test results
of various componets.  At Nissans arizona test center
they drive cars day and night over simulated terrible
roads doing an abusive driving drive pattern for many
cycles until failure.  The cars never rest and they
sit in salt spray and heat and humidity soak chambers
for hours on end when not being driven.

This testing ages a car very quickly, ever see a 4
month old 03 Altima literaly rusting to pieces or a
brand new Titan crumbling?  Ever see 409 stainless
rust so bad it literaly disintergrates?  Ever see a
solid cast iron exhaust manifold rust though? Springs
rust though and break, spindels disintergrate, Shocks
rust thorough blow the oil out then tear apart, rotors
rust through?The cars get cut to pieces and the pieces
evaluated afterwards by us engineers and desions are
made on how to improve the parts.  They don't rest
until the whole vehicle can go the distance.

This sort of testing is ungodly expensive and for a
volume of 500 headers would increse the price of the
header by about $300-500 apiece.  Would anyone pay for
that?  Thats just for durabilty testing for one cycle,
not to mention if the part fails and a countermeasure
needs to be applied.

Its another reason to buy Nismo S-Tune parts.  They
are designed to survive conditions that would make
most aftermarket parts turn into iron ore. (shameless
plug)

A brand new SR20VE 20V manifold retails for over $650
bucks and is heavy.

So would any of you buy a header that has been CFD'ed,
FEA'ed, stress tested on the bench, 150 hr dyno tested
for thermal durabilty and gone through the durability
drive cycle?  I would say at those volumes you would
be looking at a $1500 header?  Any takers?  If you can
get 500 pre orders for $1500 up front I'll design and
produce one!  Each one will come with a weibil curve
to predict the probablitly of lasting 100k miles and I
won't rest until that's a 3 sigma probablity which
I'll need to make a profit.

Get the group deal going.

Mike
--- wmc_sr20 at bellsouth.net wrote:

> Nonsense!  Many (not all) aftermarket retail
> consumer grade headers do have
> problems.  And any comparison of pro racing
> equipment to a daily driver is
> pretty much irrelevant.

> Lots of cars are coming from the factory with
> tubular headers these days,
> like those nice JDM SR20 pieces.