I'm putting together an engine and after lots of back and forth, I ended up buying lake headers with the provisions for under the car exhaust. I'm currently running open lake headers now, and love the look, but realize that this new engine is going to be louder and begrudgingly accept that I'll want mufflers sometimes. So..to make myself feel better, I was wondering - when did lake header block off flanges and plates start appearing? Was that a 60's thing? Sent from my SM-G950U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Yeah, I hear ya - but most of the old photos I see are either straight up race cars on the salt, with lake headers, or street cars weekend racing, with under the hood headers. Sent from my SM-G950U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Put mufflers in the lakers. I’ve been running that way for quite awhile and never had a problem. They are still loud but takes the edge off. If your on the road being a ass, then the cops might have a problem with them. If the cops says can’t run open headers. You can argue the fact. I can see mine just look into the the end and there they are. Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I believe they were on quite a few cars from the very beginning of lakes racing. They weren't always obvious because they were under the car but when some of the cars were featured in a magazine you could sometimes see them. For an early example of the hood side exit headers with a street muffler hook-up look no further than our own Dean Lowe's RPU on the cover of Hot Rod, Jan. 1962. Not the first, but truly classic. Personally, I don't like to start and run a new engine for the first few hours without some kind of mufflers. If there's something going wrong inside you can't hear it over the exhaust noise until it becomes catastrophic.
When? Almost every jurisdiction had some form noise regulations and they we're enforced. So a race only car wouldn't need mufflers and most street driven, or dual purpose, cars wouldn't be able to get along long with out them. -Dave
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