I love how in the beginning he's trying to teach us this counting the circumfrence to pre-trim the wrap, then by the time he's gotten to the other header he's "just use the whole roll, f*ck it!" lol
I just used this exact stuff (DEI 1 inch) on my motorbike header, and you have just documented EVERYTHING I went through! Not cutting enough wrap, getting tangled, breaking the metal straps, wrap fraying...don't forget tiny shards of fiberglass EVERYWHERE....I basically sacrificed a mechanic's uniform thanks to this job...
They tell you to soak the fiberglass wrap in water to keep from shedding fiberglass shards. The titanium is made out of basalt, so it's not as much of a PITA.
Honestly man, great video. You didn't edit out the trials and tribulations, and your dry sense of humor made it hilarious. I think based on this I'm going to skip wraps for. Great content!!!
For you turbo guys (and Eric may have noticed this as well), when you wrap exhaust and turbo manifolds, since it helps retain the heat, it can actually aid in spooling turbos faster since you're losing less heat. This could impact your tune, but not always. Great video Eric!
Stainless Steel Hose Clamps Also work very well on wrap. I personally prefer the pre-soak wrap as it tightens up as it drys and doesn't tend to slip around with the heating and cooling cycles. Great video Eric, this will really help those who have never done wrap before.
Not sure if someone mentioned this or not but to eliminate the fraying I use liquid super glue on the ends. Best way is to do a line of glue across the wrap beforehand then cut it after a minute for a very clean cut. Works amazing.
In my honest opinion, nothing beats the awesome look of a wrapped pipe on a car or especially motorcycle. I plan on doing my header and bike now that I've seen this video! P.S. Mummification is definitely a dying field. bu-dum- tiss!
When I wrapped my headers I did it with them off the motor , much easier that way. Plus I used some thin tie wire twisted together for tension (el cheapo solution) to hold the wrap tight as I went along. Then used the stainless clamps up near the exhaust ports on the head. I also kept the wrap away from the header bolts slightly so that I could still get the bolts back in once the headers went back in the car. Be ready for some smoke when you start it up the first time. Because the header gets hotter and it will burn off the paint that's on the header.
Nice! I just ordered RRE headers to replace my stock exhaust manifold and I plan on heat wrapping them before installing. All I needed was a how to vid and I was not disappointed to see your vid pop out as a first choice. Thank you, sir.
I wish Eric well in his new venture, building custom cars. I have no issue with his doing whatever he wished with his time and energy. Personally, I will miss ""EricTheCarGuy is a channel dedicated to the art of auto repair and helping the do-it-yourselfer", the description that he wrote for RU-vid, and which is still the top level channel summary. But I would rather that Eric do what he does because he enjoys it, not because he feels obligated. Change is better than stagnation Eric acknowledges that his new venture is significantly different from his original one, and because of his new passion, has notified everyone, those who share it and those who don't, that he has no intention to move backward. I respect that. It's honest and fair to let your customers know when your plans change and you are moving on. There is one last action needed to complete the change of direction, and I suggest that Eric do it as soon as possible.. Eric built a brand, a reputation and a business on his original mission. I think that for his new venture to be as successful as possible, it needs to be cleanly separated from the old. I think that he should start a new channel, ( Ericthesupercarguy ?), and move the Fairmont project videos already completed to it. Adding a line to each of his repair channel videos to the new channel would be like what he did with ETCG1 and provide a way to keep all his work under one umbrella. Long time viewers who have a continued interest in Eric and what he is doing will follow him wherever he goes. I will, although not with the frequency that I followed his older videos. Because some of his future work on custom cars will be undeniably repair videos, those could be in both channel listings with cross promotional descriptions linking to the 2 older channels. I hope that he reads this and takes my advice. I'd really hate for him to to fail because of the inertia of the old brand and confusion of newer watchers looking for what he isn't doing any more.
I soaked mine. Then wrapped. Dried them. Then I hit them with the Silcone heat wrap paint. Dried them a second time. After cutting my hands several times on the steel zip ties, I opted for chicken wire. Looks very nice. I'm very happy with my results. The wrap is hard like a cast and looks as nice now, 3 years later, as they did on day one. And my wife helped me the whole time.
Hello Eric, this is just suggestion; from front to rear, tube 1) wrap from header to collector ( the metal clamps (they will loosen up and corrode and fall off) suck don't use them, use safety wire, make a double loop around tube and pig tail tight. tube 2) wrap from collector to top and safety wire with double loop tight. tube 3) from collector to top and safety wire. tube 4) start at top and work down and include lower part of tube 3 finishing at collector and again use safety wire. The small band clamps will loosen up in time plus they fray the wrap material. When starting cut the material at 45 degrees and add super glue to edge so no fraying happens. If you use .032 size wire stainless wire ( as used in aviation) it will stay tight and no corrosion. good luck hunting for a job well done. I visit your u-tube often. Thanks
I have found better performance and useful life of the headers by spraying them with VHT coating let it dry before installing the wrap, Then perform a second coat. Allow the second coat to tack, this will help retain the wrap to the header. If one is so inclined they can spray the exterior of the wrap too with the VHT.
I have a 347 stroker with patriot mid lengths. I want to wrap them for under hood temp purposes. I heard a lot of people saying wrap ruins headers because they get too hot and rust. Does that vht trick keep that fro, happening?
A tip for people making big power (with actual high exhaust temps) or have aftermarket turbo setups, would be to wet the wrap before hand and make sure to pull it EXTREMELY tight after each loop. Its the difference between it unraveling after a few heat cycles vs it never unraveling after 100s of heat cycles...
Header wrap is a good idea on any headers, doesn't have to be "big power" applications. I use it on my small power 545 stroker 460, the heat soaks into the starter and wreaks havoc on starting without a 30 minute cool down.
kudos to you Eric, great videos, I got some tips that'll save me time and material. and i must say including your own mistakes for us to watch is incredibly commendable! I believe it reflects your honesty and you are a better person for it. you have my subscription, keep it up Chief!
liked how at the end of the video, you shrank it, so the other video icons would not be in the way of your face. I hate that so much when it does that. So good job and good show.
I got a header ordered for my car that’s made out of all stainless and doesn’t have provisions to bolt the stock heat shielding back on. I originally wasn’t gonna wrap it but after watching this I feel like it’s gonna look pretty cool and probably be beneficial to add
The headers wrapped make the engine look way better. You will have to lay on the ground to see mine, its a VW Beetle. Being air cooled, I could use less heat around the engine. I started my sidewinder header the other day. I found out by trial and error that gripping my hand around the wrap on the pipe and twisting it in a tightening motion as I progressed, this made the wrap snug down really tight, before clamping with the ties. Oh and my hands got very itchy from loose fibers, good to see you wore gloves. I had some unraveled strands on my first section too, so your issues made me feel better. Thanks good video Eric.
I've never seen a video on how to install wrap, glad you did one. Between your experience with those ties and boosted miata saying to use aircraft safety wire, I'm going to try this myself on my turbo Escort. Thanks,
@paulsonrc If you could prevent wrap shifting it'd make more sense to have no overlap, exposure to laminar heat dissipation. Thanks for your presentation!
Aircraft safety wire is better to lock down those wrap ends and any loose areas of the wrap. Those crappy bands break over time after a multiple heat cycles. If you use safety wire, be sure to get the special tool that allows you to twist and cut the wire. looks really sharp and very pro.
EVERY time i see your videos i think well at least i'm not the only one that lives with murphy's law you gotta love what you do! anyways i love your vids keep'em coming thank you eric
Top tip: Ask wife for help! Small hands and an eye for neatness from doing crafts make the job easy and results better! DISCLAIMER: Your results may vary, I will not accept responsibility for injuries you receive as a result off asking! (mine weren't that bad)
Hi: I loved this video! Like millions: can we get a FLIR reading of heat exchange efficiency? Like maybe a video detailing why you wrap and it’s pros and cons? Maybe use aircraft safety wire and demonstrate that tool? Wrapping is kind of a dark art as the few people who know a lot about it are race car and aircraft/jet engine mechanics. It’s like welding; everyone want to know about it but no one explains it.
Subs because this helped me wrap the long tube headers on the 67 Coronet so much more easier yesterday I had the stupid thing in my lap with the heat wrap not knowing how to go about it but then I totally didn't think of wrapping them halfway down to the collector altogether and then doing the last two halfway.. DUH 🙏🙏 Thanks breh
wow, at the beginning, you made that look hard. the second side looked much easier. I've used 2" stuff. i chose to use hose clamps to hold the wrap on the primaries and big hose clamps on the collector. it worked well for me. i just used regular black dei wrap, not the fancy titanium stuff. i like to wrap before i even install the headers. cramped angles that would be impossible were cake. 2.4L Alero. 2.8L S10, small blocks in full sized trucks. small block 3rd gen Camaro. 10 degree cooler intake air = 1% more power. keep up the great videos, man.
That DEI is really good stuff, I installed some on my Eclipse manifold. A word of warning though, when you first start the car they will smoke and smell very bad until whatever it is that's burning is all the way burned off. So I'd recommend starting the car with the hood open and let it run outside for a good 20-30 minutes. Or just hit boost and drive fast so the wind takes the smell away ;)
Very informative. I have an SVT header I wanna wrap before I put it on my first gen ford focus and this gives me at least an idea how to do it when the wrap kit and gaskets come in. It's a really funky looking header and will probably be a pain to wrap, but the plus side is only have one to do since it's only a 4 banger. Lol
I highly recommend going over it with a blow torch , just a quick once over , it heats it up and makes it squeeze the pipes tight and makings smoking on first start up less. I worked with a lot of that wrap over the years and found out a few tips
I had the same issue with one of the threads on the end pulling and making a mess out of the end of the roll, what I ended up doing is just zip tieing it and that worked great. Great jobs, looks great. An
Hey Buddy... you're not the only one that stuff is fiddly to! I hate that stuff with a passion for that reason. I took my headers off and went to HPC (High Performance Coatings) in OKC, OK and had the coated inside and out with their thermal barrier coating and the outside top coated with the ceramic polished stuff.... $385.00 worth of coating on a set of Hooker Super Competition headers but they still look like new I'm told... I sold the car they were on several years ago. DEI makes some great products, but like you say... it's best done off the engine and I went from the primary tubes downward so the overlaps were laying on top of each other like shingles on your house... the exposed edge is on the bottom that way. You rock man! I used stainless safety wire to secure mine with a twisting tool... works great and I hid the ends under the bottom of the tubes. I noticed the bolts are out of your valve covers.... whatcha doing in there?
Good eye. I was swapping valve covers and engine accessories that day. That will be in a future video. I would love ceramic coated headers, but this was less expensive. I'm in to this build pretty deep at this point and thought this was a good way to save some $. Perhaps I'll install a set of ceramics later down the road. Thanks for the input.
I have wrapped a few headers, my first attempt was not so good.... it was a little floppy. The second time, I was not able to cover as well as I had hoped, but it worked.. then it came off after a year from being hit with a power washer... the header I wrapped after that was not pretty, but it was functional and I sprayed it with header wraps spray to hide that fact. The last one I wrapped, was a bit of a work of art.... and spraying it with header spray, in black, it looks freaking sick in my friend's engine bay. That all said, the first header I wrapped is currently on my engine these days, and while it was not sprayed, and it is a bit floppy, it has held up, and in all cases, really does make a huge difference under the hood.
hi Eric.For the unraveling of the wrap. think of it as triads on a old jeans you turnt into short. you can simply apply heat at the ends of the triads to stop it from unraveling. I've never done wrapping of the exhaust manifold and i'm quite young but it's just a taught i had and felt like sharing
Nice job wrapping, i did similar with my tubular manifold and downpipe. It withstood 7 years and when i parted the car out it was super brittle and fell apart by that time. I also find it useful to go to harbor freight and get a big bag of those metal ties vs name brand. You get more per dollar vs the little kits with a little bit of ties. The down side they are all long so cut to fit but that was the only difference.
Not sure what kind of turbocharger you got there, (sure you've told us) but I am a foreman at a facility that among other customers, manufactures components for Turbonetics.. The level of precision we manufacture them to, is just amazing.
This really should be a video on how to distroy a set of steel headers. Everything you do is excellent , and great workmanship, but just wait until you run this engine a year or so. The metal cannot tolerate the excessive heat traped in the pipes and the pipes will fall apart under the wrap. Been there done that. A set of stainless headers is what is needed in this application .
I saw a suggestion from someone to Superglue the ends after you cut them, rather than tape. . Glad I watched this before doing it though! Now I know what a PITA those metal ties are. I'm just doing a part of exhaust pipe so I'll probably just try hose clamps.
I have a 50' role of the same stuff sitting in wait in my room to wrap my Integra. haven't decided if I want to wrap the current header or get I new one. I'm super excited to cool the engine bay though
I am wondering if hose clamps would be preferable to the clamps they provided you with. They seem to be made of the same material, and hose clamps may work a lot better.
I’m thinking of doing this on my ‘49 straight eight. Not that it’s a beast but it gets too hot and percolates like crazy. That’s what you get with the intake and exhaust next to each other.
I know this will make me look like a internet expert..BUT, I have wrapped the exhaust of every motorcycle I have owned (which is a lot). So, a few pointers... wrap towards to the collector, not away. wrap multiple headers together when they are closer than a 1/4 inch to one another. Loose wrap the amount of loops you need to make wrapping MUCH easier. I soak even Ti wrap to keep the dust/particles down.
"A couple of loops short." Not sure why I chuckled at that, I guess it reminds me of saying "A few cards short of a deck" or "A few slices short of a loaf" when mocking someone :D
