Header wrap

[Bill Chase]

I have read so many conflicting opinions on this. For a moderate performance na 385 sbc in a c4 corvette chassis where underhood heat is an issue even in stock form; is wrapping the headers worth the effort? I have ceramic coated hooker super comps, and dont care if they rot out in 5years if I can get a 10% decrease in underhood temps.

It is a street car, not a daily driver, but will see 100 miles or more per week from march through October annually. Hardly a maximum effort build, but it is above and beyond bolt on stuff, and should be a solid 350-375 rwhp.

Yeah or nay?

[cgarb]

Cut a hole in the hood to vent some heat.

[miniv8]

Wrapping works to tame underhood heat, no question about it.
Single turbo, twin turbo and NA. it works.

[rebelrouser]

Header wrap should work to control under hood temp, but if you are like me, it is itchy, and breaks my skin out when changing plugs and working on the car. Also it will shorten the life of your headers, have seen that several times. I do not know how much it helps but ceramic coatings also reduce under hood temps, and they don't itch. On your corvette you most likely will not be doing a lot of maintenance work, like on a car that is raced, so it might not be a consideration.

[panic]

Making a bag to enclose the primaries is even cooler, much less work, easier to change.

[Bill Chase]

Cut a hole in the hood to vent some heat.

there is a company that makes a two piece louver set for the c4 hood. i plan on doing that. as well as a proper cold air induction through the license plate hole on the front bumper. I should have mentioned that in the original post.

[Bill Chase]

Making a bag to enclose the primaries is even cooler, much less work, easier to change.

A local circle track racer suggested I wrap the primaries from the flange about 12-18 inches down each primary.He said that would give most of the benefits, and not saturate the entire header with excess heat Given the pretty abrupt bend within 6 inches of the flange it seems logical.

I wondered about those blankets; do you have much experience with them?

[ProPower engines]

Making a bag to enclose the primaries is even cooler, much less work, easier to change.

A local circle track racer suggested I wrap the primaries from the flange about 12-18 inches down each primary.He said that would give most of the benefits, and not saturate the entire header with excess heat Given the pretty abrupt bend within 6 inches of the flange it seems logical.

I wondered about those blankets; do you have much experience with them?

We do it on a regular basis.
Coated headers will get burned up real fast as the coating does not even like or can stand the heat from the long fast idle time duration during cam break in periods.

But as far as cutting the under hood heat its the perfect way to do it.
There is even some power to be gained as well depending on your combo.

[panic]

Doing the iron manifold on my 2JZ-GTE (it's already Swain coated) and everything else I can reach down into the tunnel, but no results yet

[cgarb]

Cut a hole in the hood to vent some heat.

there is a company that makes a two piece louver set for the c4 hood. i plan on doing that. as well as a proper cold air induction through the license plate hole on the front bumper. I should have mentioned that in the original post.

Honestly, this will do more to lower under hood temps than header wraps in my opinion. Wraps are a pain in the ass. If the headers are individual tubes they are not too bad, if they are all welded together it makes for some painstaking work. Wear gloves too because the fiberglass gets in your hands pretty good. I did a set for a buddy of mine, we did it for looks mainly, because they were a set of chopped up homemade headers that had pieces of crinkle bent exhaust pipe in them. It was a temporary fix that turned permanent due to fitment problems with the new headers. We went back to the old chopped up ones because of time constraints and wrapped them so they didn't look as shitty. Would I do another set...no.