What can I use to fabricate headers?

[RoadtripRon]

Has anyone got tips on scratch building headers? I considered using metal wire of the correct diameter, then painting a flat off-white color, but I'm not sure how to deal with the mounting flanges. Any advice?

Thanks

[Eric Stone]

I've tried aluminum tubing, but it's a pain. The next set I try to build will be solid solder. For the flanges, I'd use thin sheet styrene, and for the collectors, I'd use a small piece of tubing with some thin sheet styrene as a collector flange, then wrap a piece of the heavy lead foil that comes around the top of a wine bottle to make the collector look right. I've seen too many sets of scratched headers where the builder tried to cram all the tubes into an oversized piece of tubing, and the collector doesn't look right.

[Mike Kucaba]

I've not tried this,but aluminum armature wire(used for supporting sculptures) works well so I've read.Get it at Hobby Lobby, Michaels etc.

[John E. Bowers Jr.]

The headers on this yet to be finished '32 are fabbed out from .060 inch solid solder. The collectors will be done with a short piece of aluminum tubing wrapped with electrical heat shrink. I've done it in the past and found that it can look pretty good.

[Eric Stone]

Those 32 headers look pretty good. I hadn't thought about using the electrical heat shrink- that's a good idea.

[disabled modeler]

Hi Guys......ive used solder before to make things like headers,plumbing,tubing...........it bends very easily and paints well.

[MikeMc]

solder or the armature wrap as mentioned above. If you need flanges, styrene sheet or get some PE ones'

I drill the block out first then bend up the tubes...heres a set on my '31.....

[VW Dave]

PE flanges are a good option, and I'm a huge fan of the aluminum 'armature wire' from my local Michaels store.

I used aluminum tubing to make collectors on these headers, but they only had 2 pipes per side:

I'm keen on trying the heatshrink tubing collector idea. I figure you could use these 'bead cones' as collectors as well, by lightly crimping the big end around the pipes going into it, trimming them to length and attaching PE flanges:

[Jon Cole]

  davezinn said:

if you do buy some solder be sure to avoid any acid core as it will come back later to haunt you and make a mess of your model. the rosin core so far has not created any problems for me and i've built alot of headers. solid core would be best, but not that easy to find.

Dave

And if you need further convincing, learn from my mistake! This is what an acid core solder exhaust looks like! D'oh!

[Brandon05l]

on derby cars we drill 4 holes in the motor and bend soter in it and glue it in this plobably wount help but worth posting