Neat/pro looking way to clearance headers? - DIY Solution solved!.

[vlad01]

Well the pacemakers are a must as a min on these engine, are they worth it? absolutely. The gains are very significant on the Buick with long tube headers, as far my research over the years, Pacemaker were the only ones that even came close to the primary lengths required all other brands were just tube versions of the cast logs, far too short to be of any use, Pacemaker are in fact still on the short side for these engines, but do fall into the acceptable range where most of the gains are already there. They are about 650mm long, the ideal for a stock engine would be around 950-1100mm according to the maths. 650mm is right on the edge of min length, it's probably something like 85-90% of the gains the full length, so it's not bad by any means.

Was it worth all the effort to make them fit, very yes, I hate when stuff doesn't fit.

The HPC coating is something I swear by now, not for the marketed benefits, don't get me wrong, which are great, but the most important benefits not marketed as the primary one is corrosion protection. HPC look like the week I used them on my other VP many years later and with hard abuse and contaminates getting on them. Absolutely zero rust or even an inkling of rust all these years later.


As you can see, the headers on this thread were rusty as shit, but they were close to new with only 3k on them, they deteriorated very quickly, mostly from not even using the car, just the humidity in the air did most of that, even kept in a shed didn't stop them from rusting that fast.

The coating will benefit thermal management a lot too, I have things really close in the other VP since they are competition headers from Pacemaker (larger and longer) which they no longer make btw, there is no issues with anything heat affected because the coating's high reflectance makes it a poor black body emitter, so the IR emissions are cut down massively while at the same time the actual temp goes up a fair amount which is suppose to help scavenging but I am more keen to see if it helps light off the cat faster



The most expensive part of all of this exhaust project was the headers themselves, followed by the coating, the other mods were very cheap (would be practically free if I had the skills and stuff to weld, which I don't), it was only really just time consuming, but worth every bit of it.


I probably have the only Pacemaker buick v6 headers that fit 100% in the country.


For a more substantial engine build, I'd go the custom route with all these things in mind. From what I've learned, you'd make good use of the clearance pressing technique even when you have total freedom in tube routing, especially if using the larger pipes for a wild engine. There just isn't enough room in these cars especially with the amount these engines move around when cornering.