Hot Rods Hedman Hedders info wanted

Sitting here digging through a repop 1963 Moon catalog and looking at the old hedman hedders pictures, wondering what the dimensions are of these old headers....so does anyone have an actual Hedman catalog that may have this info? Looking at the older style that were two piece...4 into 2, 2 into 1.
Slowly rebuilding my dad's old 32, and he thinks they had something like that on it, but it's 50+ years ago so he doesn't remember what.

 

Give chris a call. He might be able to help you out. Its worth asking if he will bend up a new set.

 

here is a photo of the ones my dad bought back then. the one on the left has been modified to clear the steering box

 

more photos:

 

Hello PRB,
We had similar ones on our 292 671 SBC in 1960, they were only the 4 into one and that led below and under the car. We had a local muffler shop add legal pipes and tube mufflers bolted on under the car. When we raced, those pipes/mufflers were disconnected or removed. There were some clearance issues that the muffler shop heat altered for a smooth fit in our 40 Willys C/Gas coupe.
Jnaki

 

The Heddman method of grouping two cylinders together was ment to help scavenge exhaust gas better than 4 into 1 styles.
Hot Rod had articles on them in the day.
I built a set of outside headers to duplicate that style, installed on an A roadster.
deChrome

 

Dimensionally, most of those early Chevy headers from Hedman had 1 1/2" O.D. tubing for the primary tubes. Some of the two piece models had 1 1/2" primaries and the lower section was 1 5/8", or 1 5/8" primary tubes and a 1 3/4" lower section (an early version of "step" headers) although again, this was done mainly to facilitate installation. The flange material was 1/4" x 2" hot rolled steel. The flanges were drilled in stacks of 6, in a drill jig, with a drill press and the ports were cut out using industrial grade hole saws. In those days Hedman was more concerned with making a header that fit well and than with maximum performance. The tubing was Oxy/Acetylene welded and the flanges were welded with arc welders sometimes using Oxy/Acetylene rod as additional filler. The flanges were surfaced on large horizontal belt sanders.
I started working there about the time they realized that they needed to join the swing to 4 tube headers to keep up with their competitors. I was recruited from Cyclone Headers (where equal length high performance oriented headers were the norm) to assist with the transition.
A huge number of the old design headers were returned and scrapped during my first few years there. Who knew they would someday be desirable again.
I hope this helps.

 

Bob,
interesting info, do yo know if they ever made a list of the dimensions? For me i need to be 4 1/4" or less from the head surface/mountings surface to the outer tube. I only have 4 1/2" total width there, head surface to frame rail.

 

I sold the last set I had rescued years ago so I don't have any on hand to measure, but I'm pretty sure that the headers would fit into that space. Maybe some of the other guys who still have them could measure for you.
What chassis/engine combo do you have. Can you post some pictures?

 

i will take some measurements. you need from the head straight out? and ?

 

not sure if this is a really good usable pic......


if you measure from top of the frame rail to the cyl head it's 4 1/2".
Stock 32 frame, stock 32 body....but it's a Chevy. Not sure if this helps much, but really need something better that cheesy block hugger headers

 

What you are talking about is what is commonly known as a Tri Y header. The concept is to pair cylinders based on firing order to give a break between exhaust pulses. This tends to increase torque and broaden the powerband, especially on motors that aren't too radical cam timing wise. But the early Hedman headers shown in the original Post are Not true Tri Y's - they are just paired together for packaging reasons, like bchctybob said they were more concerned with fit than power. A true Tri Y for a small block Chevy will pair 1 & 5 and 3 & 7 on the left side and 2 & 4 and 6 & 8 on the right side. You will notice that the Hedman's don't pair the left side correctly for the Tri Y advantage. The Shelby GT350 was probably the first mass produced True Tri Y that worked and took advantage of the potential gains. Doug Thorley (Doug's Headers) was the biggest and most successful proponent of Tri Y's for the street and racing. Jack Burns is about the foremost authority on header design and flow in the world, having done headers for everything from Formula 1 to NASCAR and everything in between and here's what he says about them “For just about everyone running an American V-8 on the street, the Tri-Y design is almost always optimal for overall power production.” Yet they remain a hard sell in the market place .....

 

Thanks TB33

 

thats in a 33 chevy, by the way. frames should be real close to the same width.

 

yah, now to try and find something simular

 

I was going to add the info on the tube sizes, but Bob got there first!

 

Yup.

 

What Hotroddon said about the pairing is correct and I believe it was mostly a manufacturing/packaging decision. At the time those were designed most headers were more of a "tubing manifold" than a true performance designed part.
I've always been a big fan of well executed Tri-Ys for street cars but when 4-tube headers became the norm on the our racing hero's cars, Tri-Ys became a hard sell. I think in the 15 years I had my custom header shop I only did 3 sets.
For the OP, I don't think that the old HCH-1 style header is any better than Chevy's Ram Horn design as far as performance goes, but they are prettier.

 

I think they are probably somewhat better than the rams horns, but not a lot.

 

Just a bit more interesting Hedman History. Those old headers were really all hand made. There were templates that the assembler used to mark a pre-bent tubes. He then used Wiss M2 tin snips mounted to a floor stand to cut along the marked lines. The flange was loaded into the fixture along with the 4 pre-bent primary pipes. The pipes were marked and trimmed and the transitions fit-checked. Once everything fit, the flanges were tack welded and the transition area tack welded. With a toggle-clamp holding the outlet in place, the flange was welded up. Then the header was removed from the main fixture (with the flange still attached to a stiffener to prevent warping) and placed in a rudimentary articulated fixture so the assembler could position the header to Oxy-Acetylene weld the transitions. Whew..... and that's just one side.
Needless to say, they couldn't continue to hand make every part number and survive in the header business. With some initial reluctance, we made the change to mostly 4-tube designs which are much less labor intensive. My job was to create the prototypes, fit-check the prototypes on all intended applications, build all the jigs and fixtures required for all stages of manufacturing and evaluate the process and make any changes required to speed up the processes.
Oh yeah, I got to build all the custom headers for our sponsored cars (the fun part!)

 

they sure do look nice.

 

Yeah, they're just the thing for a period build. I still have a few of the compound bends that were used for the front and rear primary pipes. They were made with a poured lead clamp block so they could get the bends that close together. Yep, I made tooling for the old Pines benders too....ugh.
I re-created some for my '31 Tudor. Strange at it seems, it cost just about the same to "flash chrome" them as they wanted to coat them. Of course, I went with chrome.....

 

I've always loved the looks of the early Hedmans. Using a set on my latest '32 roadster build.

.

 

Rocket (GuyOnThe HAMB) has a couple pair of the two piece ones. If you want I can get some dimensions if you still need them. He is making them fit on his 283ci in a Model A truck.

 

If ya could that would be awesome! Rocket as in Ryan?

 

I will get some pics at some point tomorrow.


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if it's easier, just send them up here and i can get the measurements

 

Those two piece ones are nice. I used to see them every now and then at swap meets but I haven't seen any in a long time. You're lucky to have them, and they seem to be in great shape for being so old.

 

I finally got a chance to get some pictures of the headers I have. The white ones were from a '57 Chevrolet from back in the 60's. I imagine that was the original fitment application. I put them on my Model A but they didn't leave enough ground clearance.
The black headers are the ones I'm using on my Model A. I'm not sure the original application for those. I needed to narrow them about 5/8 of an inch to clear the hood sides. The extensions don't work with the fenders and running boards so I will have to make new ones in the original style.



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