Just had this W-1 Belond header made with the help of the last living Belond employee. The set, when finished, are going on Sandy's roadster but you won't be able to see the collectors then so I thought I'd post this so people could see what real Belonds actually looked like. What a difference between these and the pop-offs. I'll post a shot of the collector as it was being assembled. It's tricky to build without getting any tube over-hanging into the collector
The merge is a thing of beauty. Sure is funny how true craftsmanship and art seem to intersect all the time.
Where rough cutting the merge collector for the primaries in this shot. The dykem line is the o.d. of the two primaries. Geoge had me scribe the outside of the tubing on to the collector and then die grind to within the .062-inch of the line so there would be nothing obstructing the flow in the pipes from the collector or the tubing. He was kind enough to take the time to put me through a nuts and bolts education of how custom headers were made at Belonds in the 40's and 50's. He started out sweeping up and eventually worked his way up to the custom fit up shop. George used to make Offy headers for the big cars, sprints and midgets he also did most all of the lakes cars that were sponsored by Belonds, like the Post Streamliner and the Tom Beatty Lakester. He was also proud of the fact that he was there when they worked on the header for the Indy 500 winning Salih built Belond Special that won Indy in '57 and '58.
I had to make an entirely new set of W headers when I found out that Sandy had added the SCTA required 3-foot exhaust extension to his W headers. The extensions are actually megaphones, tapering from 2-inches at the collector to 2 1/2-inches at the "baloney cut." The tapers for the magaphones was fabricated the "old way" by folding sheet metal over a fence pole and then tacking the edge and cutting the excess and finally brazing the seam closed with the desired taper. The short turn radi at the flange took forever. I always wondered why Belond Headers had so much fill rod in the joints. What I found was they would add the extra brazing rod to the tubing so they could grind away at it later to form a proper short turn. Last but not least it is a pain to make a center dump header (Belond W Header) for a Flathead V8 in a 32 frame with the stock steering box and wishbone; there simply is no spare room and with this roadster it is even more involved because it has a column shift and those rods pass right by the number 8 primary. The last 2 pics are of the number 8 cylinder's primary tube. It basically turns right and then needs to go 180 into the collector. I used a set screw and a jam nut to fasten the lower side of the header flange since it isn't possible to slide a bolt between the tube and flange. Now that they are polished, their off to the platers for a coating of nickel.
Incredible craftsmanship. Beautiful piece from a shop with such a great history. Thank you for sharing the story and photos.
Quote from my intro yourself thread. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=359942 It is possibly you have a set of copies. I know he made tens of thousands of headers but very few exist today and the majority of the stuff I've seen are pop-offs of his designs. Attached some samples: The NOS Y-Block headers were the off-the-shelf Belond Equa-Flow line sold through Sandy's company The Southern California Muffler Company. This is a typical quality header of the time. Most manufacturer produced equivilant headers. The two "center dump" pics or Belond Headers as they have been coined, are headers that came from the Southern California Muffler Service line, Sandy's other shop in the Post-War years. The Muffler Service line was the custom shop for the racers. Last scan is of a Bell Auto ad featuring Belond. I probably just confused everyone further.
It says a lot about the craft that people put into something as mundane as headers. A tip of the hat to the folks who care and take pride in their life's work. Thanks for sharing.
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