Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on the RallyBug fixing all the things we broke at the last rally race.  The header was one of the major items to fix on my to-do-list.

If you remember from my last blog post (Rallye de Paris) our collector wanted no part in our racing shenanigans and jumped off our car mid-stage smashing itself to bits.  So in January I bought 30 or so tight mandrel bends from HeartThrob exhaust, a parallel merge collector from S&S header, and proceeded to fabricate my own Sidewinder knockoff.  The original header (Version 1) that I made about 16 months ago hung too low and wasn’t protected by the skid plate.  (This most likely lead to its demise.)  I made sure not to repeat the same mistake with Version 2 and tucked the pipes as far up into the rear apron as possible.

Version 2 - Custom sidewinder header

After about three days of cutting, sanding and welding I had a kick ass looking header.  All of the 1-5/8″ tubes are equal length within an inch or so.  I finished off the header with a $25 cherry bomb muffler from my local auto parts store and mounted it in between the bumper and apron with two rubber hangers.  I spent about $150 in bends, $89 for the collector and $25 for the muffler.  Oh and it sounds mellow at idle and deep & throaty at WOT.

S&S Collector

Header protected by skid plate

Mandrel bends

Thrush Muffler

Happy driver