How to get dents out of headers

Brilliant! The dents are almost always on the outside for clearance, so the hole's on the inside unseen. Just happen to have a set of nice Big Block Chevy headers to try this on. Thanks Jimmy2car!

 

My kids take music lessons from a lady who repairs brass insterments she has all kinds of tools to reach in curves and bends she can take a crushed brass horn like a tuba and make it look as good as new so you may try checking out your music store but they have to be set up to fix brass horn good luck

 

The hard part is finding a woman that can suck that bearing through the header tube!

 

It's funny you say this. The guy I got them off of was a PDR guy & he was the one that suggested the water & deep freezer trick.
He couldn't get to the dents to PDR them!

 

Coating will probably get damaged at engine break in anyway. I never coat headers till after break in

 

+1.... I'm guessing that the metal will be stretched where the guy hammered on the header, it is amazing he did not knock the coating off to this point, unless these are just some shallow dents...

Regarding the ball bearings, if your luck would be like mine, I would end up getting the dent out, but then the ball bearing would get stuck...
Tom

 

That's all well and good for brass but the steel tubing the headers are made from is considerably harder than brass.

 

What they do is drop the big bearing in from the collector end,propably wont go in past the flange any way,fill the tube with more bearings,then you have a way to push the ball past the dent,when it passes the dent it should be able to fall out the way it came in,kinda works like a big flexible push rod?,hard to explain but you should be able to visualize it in your mind. Harvey

 

I agree w the drill opposite and reweld, Ive done that before. Ive heard about the air pressure and heat deal, but depending on the coating, the red hot torch heat will certainly mess up the coating. Sounds like you got the crap end of that deal.....fix em right and recoat....there goes the budget......ouch

 

Yeah, if nothing works and you have to make a repair then recoat them, you might try the drill from behind method along with a slide hammer stud gun studs from the outside while someone pushes from the inside with a punch.

 

find or make some wooden balls the exact size of the tube, then drive it through the header, with a hammer you will need several balls to push the first one through, the wooden ball stands the best chance to not harm the finish and still repair the dimple/dent.
Otherwise the drill from the back side and punch out option would be my next attempt.

Godspeed
MrC.

 

Whatever you do , do not wrap the headers as they will rot out the tubes faster than throwing them in the ocean

Put the same dents on the other header and claim its a speed secret to help tune and balence exhaust flow to compensate for the varience for the number of bends and overal lenth of the tube as it comes out of the collecter @ 43.2 mph

 

It wouldn't rot with the coating though.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ x2

 

It does, If you dont beleive me , call a header comany and ask them

Pro race teams do it because the headers dont last long enough before they change or switch them to rust out

 

Quick question. Have you tried installing these headers on your fairlane yet? You are sure gonna feel silly if you spend a bunch of time removing those dents, only to find that you have to put them right back again to get them to fit in the car. Not saying this is gonna happen, but I would sure check carefully before I hammered them all out...