Is is worth it to try to build your own header for a 22RE? I'm not in an air quality attainment area so no smog testing. I'm thinking the cost of the individual pieces of tubing, cones, y's... will add up to getting close to a LCE, or maybe halfway there?, but then you might as well just spend the money. I was thinking mild steel with a high temp paint. I think it would be sort of fun, but for the cost, not sure it's worth the effort.

Thoughts?

 

If you have the bender the Tig welder the other tools.

A good print of what you need go for it.

Do this sort of Fab work all the time you should be good to go.

Have you given thought to what stainless your going to use?

Maybe you want to go with Aluminum??

 

I would personally just keep stock manifold, then start the upgrade from the downpipe/y-pipe. This will keep the Tri-y layout vs a 4into1

 

I was thinking mild with mandrel bent stuff off the shelf and mig with a high temp paint. I could do mig stainless, but without a decent tube bender, I'm stuck buying the bends and and I suspect it would be close to the same price as a complete LCE header.

Can you get much of a performance upgrade with just a larger downpipe and decent Y pipe? Seems to me the smallest orifice along the line will be your limiting factor in flow. I wonder about the cat with all the talk of a large tube header and open magnaflow-type exhaust, doesn't the cat limit everything? or in the case of the stock exhaust mani, seems like it would also limit your flow.