i wouldn't trim the clip if it involves ruining the locking ability of stated hose, this would cause unmetered air to enter if so.

 

the clip did not have to be removed, It just needed to be clipped. But as mentioned the fittings were redesigned to no longer require trimming.

 

Because I'm not a petty person, your welcome for the most recent sale of the re-designed block off plates that now work for the M156...

 

Thank you @Jasonoff

 

^ you’re

 

This thread delivers!!! I'm about to pull the trigger on MBH but ARH would be a good option as well. Cheaping out never pays off.

 

for those who aren't aware...ARH makes a full 3 inch header back exhaust system as well for the W204. I believe this is the only full 3 inch end to end exhaust system for the W204.

 

 

Bill ****ing Murray.

 

I just argue that saving $1500, which would be enough for a throttlebody upgrade would be considered paying off.

For $2,750 you can get

Longtubes and TB Upgrade
Longtubes, Tune, Crank Pulley
Longtubes 1/4 of a supercharger kit
Longtubes, Injectors, Flex fuel
Longtubes and All new tires
Longtubes, Coilovers

 

Are you going to sell supercharger kits for $5600?

 

Will they fit properly or will you need to trim a bunch of important shít?

 

Why the $2750? is it just an arbitrary number? Or is it the retail amount for our headers?
for $2750..
You can get a 10% discount.
You can also get the best made and performing headers for your Mercedes.
You can also get a no BS lifetime warranty thats transferable.
You can also support American workers and families.
You can get a 100% original design, not some 2nd hand stolen copy sold by imo the biggest jackass around ,who tries to blame a 2 year old child for using his credit card.
You can feel good that your Mercedes deserves better than a cheap Chinese copies header.
You wouldn't buy your lady a knock off hand back why buy yourself knock off headers?

 

Do you have an unbiased opinion on your Tri-Y design vs say ARH for road racing?

Pros, cons etc

 

Actually yes. Years ago we had a Member here by the screen name RAR Financial. Some may remember Rick. He had some 4 into 1 headers built for his CLS63 M156. Being a mod juckie Rick reached out to me to see about our headers. He drove his car our to us and we installed a set of our headers. We did before and after dynos and we made more power than a set of full length 4 into 1 headers. I have a picture of his headers I'll have to dig it up. Here is the link to that post from 11 years ago https://mbworld.org/forums/c63-amg-w...tube-dyno.html

 

I'm just going to point something out. It's strange no one ever mentions how Steve is 1 of the 2 founders of Weistec, He is the one who actually tuned all the cars and helped build the world record clk bs. He was an awesome tech support guy when i first bought my car which had all sorts of stupid issues (from install shop previous owner used), even though I was a second owner and had never spent a dime (pun intended) with them at the time. Just curious what ground breaking records and parts have come from Weistec ever since his departure?

As for the header discussion....
A pipe is pipe but is it? Come on Machinist you know better. You're over here talking about 321 and 304 stainless. What are the cheap **** headers made from? No one really knows. I've even heard some exhaust brands claim 304L stands for lightweight lol. (it's low carbon for the guys too lazy to google) They'll claim stainless steel but does anyone really know? It's thin stuff. not 16 or 18gauge which would be standard. You mention how ****ty you weld. I love the honesty! You of all people should appreciate the difference in a real fabricator and welder. I love seeing these ads for "cold welding" it's the perfect example of how a pretty weld can be totally useless in strength or functionality. I think your quote numbers are about 65% off. There aren't any 8k headers, 2500-3k is the sweet spot for the good stuff. That pays for good fabricators, good materials, knowledge/IP, building, marketing and profit margins. Ultimately it's supply and demand. I'd say less than 1% of MB owners actually modify their vehicles, unlike say 10% of mustang / camaro / corvette or 5%+ of BMW.

I've installed plenty of headers. Fitment is everything. They are all somewhat of a pain in the ***. C63 especially. I installed some cheapo $500 E55 headers and lets just say they required a 4ft prybar to make "adjustments" in order to fit and not rub on the car. Most people would assume they would all just fit ok, That's not the case at all. Some of the products on the market are pure TRASH. If they are really stainless as they claim, they must be 24 gauge because i can build stronger and thicker ones with a few sheets of tin foil. MBH and American racing are the top dogs in our market. Personally I prefer MBH, they just look and feel higher quality. The A.R. headers are much more like your usual $1000-$1500 mass produced domestic headers. Computer mandrel bent pipes, very few weld joints (not a bad thing), look to be robotic / mig welds. Very consistent but not as high of quality or custom looking. Mbh has thicker wall tubing all over, obviously hand made, hand tig welded and lots of thought went into fitment and overall design. Both have great fitment and I'd recommend either. I cant speak to sound or power output as both are performers. Id love to see a cleaner merge collector on the A.R. headers at their price point but i've seen worse.

I can definitely say avoid the headers that have slip fit tubes from primaries into the merge collectors. I've seen a handful of these. While this is normal practice for very high end drag racing / performance stuff. These are not that, they are cheapo china crap. Likely obx maybe? or ebay? They always crack, leak at the slip joint, or the springs holding them together break. Exhaust leaks are very annoying. The cheap stuff be it m156 or other platforms don't seal up correctly to the remainder of the oem pipes. I've yet to have a m177 (4.0) downpipe on the passenger side ball socket seal properly to the factory exhaust. I've done about 10 sets. I have to use half a tube of exhaust sealer and cross my fingers.

 

The only records I see Weistec setting are the ones for profit margin.

My 8k comment was leveled at the likes of C*****to. Aimed at people with more money than brains. Their **** better be made out of hastelloy for what it costs.

No, I’ve worked with good fabricators, and they have more of an “artistic” mind than one geared to profit. It’s right or it doesn’t ship...

I looked at MBH and I don’t have a problem with what they sell, or their price point. I actually shot them a PM and among other things I mentioned that I wanted to buy a set.

If I were going to make headers, I would require DOM (drawn over mandrel) 321 stainless. 304 tends to be brittle, and if the wall thickness is not enough, it will crack as it heat cycles and work hardens.

As I said, I way overblew my budget to make a point. No one is paying $100 an hour for welders, unless they are outsourcing their fab work at a retail level to a speed shop like the one not too far from here that has a very ****ty reputation (but most certainly not for their fabrication, John does some of the most beautiful work I’ve ever seen.)

More on this a little later. I’ve got a fire down the street I need to put out before it starts. It seems that dad can’t get his big rig started, and is attempting to jump it with his Volkswagen.

 

Welders are very under appreciated. I agree on the 321. For a premium price you should get a premium product. Not sure it's necessary as my car has had them 10yrs now and 304 is holding up just fine. For 3-4k It should no doubt be 321. Just like paying 4k+ for exhaust/muffler stuff. It better be titanium at that price point.

 

I think a lot of the “titanium” exhausts are in fact 321 stainless. Elemental Titanium by itself is actually quite flammable. You wouldn’t catch me running 1900F exhaust gas through a pure titanium part. Especially next to a pure magnesium transmission gear case. That’s a fire hazard.

I watched one of our apprentices at my “real job” light a bunch of titanium chips on fire with a dull insert. The only thing we could do was to throw sand on it to put it out. Then spent the rest of the day cleaning the sand off the lathe.

In my initial rant, the point I was trying to make is that for what most are charging for a set of 304 headers it should be 321. I had priced out probably 200% the amount of materials I likely needed and still only was up to maybe $1000 in parts. There is zero excuse for $4k+ exhaust parts. Snake oil .....



The fabricator probably purged your primaries properly before he/she struck the first arc, and the wall thickness is probably where it needs to be. I’ll tell you what though, you’d need nothing short of a carbide or CBN insert drill to put a hole in that stuff after all these heat cycles If you wanted to. It’d make a joke out of a HSS drill. I’d also be willing to bet that if you had a shagged trans or engine mount the 304 would be screaming for dear life.

The one and only bone I have to pick with most welders is that a lot of the ones I know were absent from school the day they handed out humility. Not that a lack of humility is a problem, but when a person doesn’t know that they have a lack of it, that’s the problem.

A lot of machinists are guilty of this too. We have plenty of “button pushers” that think they are God’s gift to making chips, when in fact they would/could be replaced with a FANUC robot if not for the initial startup investment.

 

We used ~12,000 ft of 321 tubing in 2020, and ~3,000 on 304. All for performance exhaust systems; mostly headers for turbocharged applications. I'm not a fab guy, but I do all the engineering and design work, including writing the specs for all the prep, welds, and finishing. We can do Inconel and titanium, but there are few buyers at those price levels, so I'll stick with the 304 vs 321 for now, but yet, many exhaust systems get made from titanium.

321 is not something I'd use or recommend on an N/A or supercharged application. The EGTs are not as high as with turbocharging, and you do not have the pressure component. 321 is very similar in chemical make-up with the exception that it has been alloyed with titanium. The biggest benefit (really the only one we care about) is how 321 improves strength AT temperature. There are also a few grades: imported, non-certified, and mil-spec. We use mil-spec, and it's a good 50% more cost than the imported garbage. IMO the improved weld quality/structural integrity is worth every penny, but some could care less. for the weekend beater, who cares, but for the track guy, DNF is a horrible fate. When it comes to bending, you can bend 321 in 1D like 304, but it's not preferred due to the different ductility. We use minimum 1.5D and more often (or as often as possible) larger bends or custom bend tooling. In short, to do it right, you really need to bend with a shop that is familiar and experienced with proper 321 forming. This usually means specialty motorsport, aerospace, aviation, or petroleum industry where the use of 321 is more common. Again, this drives up the price. Welding is very similar to 304 with the exception that gas flow rates are a bit higher and you need to use 347 filler wire which is much more expensive. Certifying 321 welds/process/product is going to be an exercise in futility unless you live next to a Northrup Grumman fab shop, but it does weld fairly similarly to 304.

If we were to make headers to the cat-back like ARH for example, made from 321. I would ballpark a price of ~$6K, and I would not recommend going to a thinner gauge (we use all 16ga). Also keep in mind the prices vendors are asking are likely also taking into consideration reverse engineering, owning the car you're developing from, laser scanning, engineering, design, prototyping, testing, fixture design, etc... It can add up. Generally for us it takes anywhere from 50-100K from nothing to production product, with development taking from a few to several months. So that cost has to be accounted for as well. Unless your a low lying scum sucking knock-off artist. In that case all those development costs go to zero. Which is great for your wallet, but terrible for supporting the companies that innovate and develop the products in the first place. Buying knock-offs is the best way to rid a niche of newer and better products for the future.

 

The $1100 headers are here DM me for info

 

Are those the same ones on Alibaba for 550 a set?

 

seriously...what the hell is the deal with you guys spamming every post and thread.

 

Ok, some questions-

Why are you spending money getting welds certified on consumer grade exhaust components. We aren’t making T64 turboshaft annular burner chambers here.... The average consumer doesn’t give a damn about x ray cross sections of the welds in their headers. All they want is a product that doesn’t leak, and welds that won’t crack in the heat or torsion stress caused by the engine flexing against its mounts. And they also don’t want to be sold a bill of goods. Again, we aren’t building aircraft here. It doesn’t need to be as light as possible with as many corners cut as possible to meet a minimum service life expectancy While still being light enough to fly.

IMHO- I wouldn’t be using a CNC pipe bender (or any pipe bender) unless I did nothing but exhaust work or roll cages or both.

I would be buying pre bent sections in “donut” or “u-bend” form in bulk and piecing it together like every other fabricator, instead of burning a truckload of cash and floor space on another piece of equipment.


Im not planning on passing my R&D costs on to customers. It’s like asking a stranger to pay for machines that I choose to buy. The customer didn’t buy that machine, I did. Why should they pay for it. Why does everything have to be about pure profit margin? After you’ve sold the parts, you aren’t also selling the machine to your customers... You aren’t selling your IP rights to your customers....

More people should follow the JHM or 034 Or TT model. TT doesn’t sell $6,000 exhaust systems. Those guys are all enthusiasts making parts for other enthusiasts. When they want to develop a new product, they put out a feeler for a potential customer to provide a development mule with the end result of having a deeply discounted version of the final product installed on their car for the low price of a little bit of aggravation while enduring growing pains. I bought completely adjustable control arms for both of my Audis with heim joints in the end for maybe 20-30% more than just the run of the mill OE Spec stuff costs from 034. Very reasonable.


I had a custom built, one off brake setup built BY WILWOOD for one of my Audis. It is the only one in the world like it. They had to buy a complete suspension corner from the same year and model car To take measurements and I didn’t get charged for it. I was charged a flat rate which while not cheap, was still much cheaper than any Brembo GT setup.

I guess I have a unique perspective on crap like this. I exist behind the scenes of manufacturing. I know what it REALLY costs to make parts, because I make the goddamn parts, and I am there when the material is purchased.

Everyone always acts like they are designing something unique, something next level that has never seen the light of day. Truth is? All of the engineering has already been done, and most of it is found in The Machinery’s Handbook(google it). You don’t need to reinvent the wheel (and charge the customer for it).



You just need to make the existing technology and practices fit your application.

My idea for repairing the camshaft adjusters? It’s not new!!!!! This type of repair has been performed on EVERYTHING since the beginning of the industrial revolution. I just made it work for the M156.

^^^^That is in essence the job description of a good fabricator.


I have digressed enough for one ****post, because everyone loves to hear me *****.

 

Exactly. Cheap, average, or good, are not what we shoot for here.

LOL