Accord Headers vs. a Stock Exhaust Manifold

Your car engine receives mixtures of air and fuel, combines them and compresses the mixture. This is then ignited and burned which in turn causes the pistons to move and produce power for your car. However all of the original air/fuel mixture is not completely consumed in the cylinders and some nasty hot chemical gases now enter the exhaust manifold and must be handled.

•  The reason you have an exhaust manifold is to receive all of the waste gases remaining in each , and then combine this hot flow from the manifold into one or two pipes which lead to the catalytic converters, mufflers and the rest of the exhaust system. The exhaust manifold is a major critical component of your exhaust system.

•  As you may know, car manufactures try to spend as little money as possible on the different components in a car, in order to increase their profit and to still be competitive. The stock manifold in your car is an example of this attempt. The manifold is typically made out of inexpensive cast iron, and it has a major problem of being efficient. The exhaust manifold creates a lot of restrictions to the exhaust gas flow, which makes the pistons work harder when pushing the exhaust gases though the system. This means the exhaust manifold creates back pressure and this back pressure robs you of potential horsepower.

•  An alternative to the stock manifold system is a product called an exhaust header. This header is an after market product which is designed as a replacement for the exhaust manifold and help regain some of the power that was lost in the original exhaust manifold. The stock exhaust manifold has several holes converging into a common chamber in order to route all of the exhaust gases. Headers, on the other hand, consists of special tubes that have gentle curves which guide the exhaust gases to your exhaust system.

• In addition to being less restrictive than the stock manifold, a correctly designed set of exhaust headers should restore lost power in the stock manifold in yet another way. In a stock exhaust manifold the flow of exhaust gases is not like a steady stream, but rather consists of a series of gas pulses from the cylinders. These pulses are comprised of different parts of the exhaust gases. Some of these pulses are at different pressure levels. If someone can correctly tune the both the length and width of the header, you then have the trailing edge of one pulse "pull" the head of the next pulse through the system.This increases the horsepower output, as it again lowers the backpressure. A manifold can't do this so this is a second great benefit of using exhaust headers over an exhaust manifold.

•   A third benefit of headers is that they look great in your engine compartment. Exhaust headers mean serious business while a stock exhaust manifold looks ho hum.  Throw away that manifold, or bury it.

Honda Accord Exhaust Headers