The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Comments on these inexpensive stainless exhaust header

Been spending winter figgering out what to buy/do on my '56 truck with a 235 engine. I came across a bunch of inexpensive stainless steel exhaust headers and was looking for opinions and experiences with the like. I know about if it sounds too good.... but the price is sooo good. I was looking to mate them up with a yet unresearched 2 carb intake.

Opinions? Comments?

Thanks.



https://www.ebay.com/b/Exhaust-Manifolds-Headers-for-Chevrolet-Truck/33632/bn_1542944?maspect=contextType%3ACAR_AND_TRUCK&Engine+-+Liter_Display=3.8L&Engine=3.8L+3852CC+235Cu.+In.+l6+GAS+OHV+Naturally+Aspirated&Submodel=3600&Year=1956&Trim=3600+Standard+Cab+Pickup+2-Door

Probably made in China. That being said I've run similar inexpensive designs from China on some LS engines and they've panned out to be pretty good. BUT take this into consideration when you're shopping...

I did find out that most of the sets on eBay being sold as "stainless steel" were a lower grade of SS that could still rust a little. They were also only stainless tubes that were welded to a chromed regular steel flange! I also found out through a little industrial espionage that these headers were actually available from China in higher grade stainless for the tubes and the flange AND available with collectors included. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any retailers who would confirm that their sets were complete SS and what grade they were.

I was figgering they were from china, I'm trying not to use chinese metal on my rebuild but the price is making me look hard at them. The Fenton and Offy's I've seen are like 3x the price.

From what I have read most are 304 stainless which will rust.

What kind of racing are you planning on doing? Headers for street engines are sold by P.T. Barnum.
Jerry

Probably will have the usual problems if you switch to headers. i.e. Leaking gaskets. Carb icing.

Save your pennies and get a good set of Fentons or the alternate versions sold by Tom Langdon. For a street car you will be way happier. Use a rimflex gasket and you will be all set. I have run a set of old style Clifford long tube headers on my motor for nearly 40 years. I took care of them, cleaned and painted on a regular basis, but still they have their issues. The Fentons will do the job, give you less grief, and hold their value whereas the cheap so called headers I see on line for under 100 bucks are 100 bucks for a reason.

No racing, just trying to squeeze a few more ponies out of the old grrl. I figger if the engine needs a rebuild I'm gonna stick a mild cam in along with double carbs a d want it to breathe. I own Jeeps that I rock crawl with and am always trying to get them to breathe better, my bikes too. It's a sickness, along with my shiney chrome addiction and love of tinkering.

Working part time gives me time to tinker but little monies to get too indulgent.

Making a stovebot cylinder head "breathe" is impossible. It doesn't matter what you bolt on before and after those horribly restrictive ports- - - -the reason sand flows slowly through an hourglass is a pretty good representation of a stovebolt cylinder head. Multiple carbs and any sort of header system at all is eye candy, as it does nothing that the original single carb and one pipe exhaust can't do better and for less money.
Jerry

Finster,

Here's a discussion of your topic on Chevy Talk:

http://chevytalk.org/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/235271

If you like to tinker, I say "Have at it". You'll never know what you can accomplish if you don't try.

Air flow on a stovebolt (and nearly as bad 194-292) engine: 90* turn after entering air cleaner, 90* turn to pass across oil, 90* turn to rise up to carb throat level, 90* turn to flow over carb opening, 90* turn to flow down through carb, 90* turn to flow along intake manifold, 90* turn to enter port runner, 90* turn to pass through intake valve, and 90* turn to flow across piston dome. And you want to make one a "screamer"? Corvette junked some of the angles with side draft carbs but it was still a 4 main bearing engine with siamesed ports. For comparison a V8 with a high rise single plane intake and a K&N type air cleaner makes it's first angle of less than 90* to get air to the intake valve and a second 90* angle to fill the cylinder. Of course this set up is almost useless for street use but people keep trying.

Evan, common sense is the first casualty of "engine builders" who don't bother to study physics. Everybody knows that twice as much carburetor as they can handle and goofy-looking dual exhausts are going to turn these sows' ears into silk purses! Just ask the Google Guru!
LOL!
Jerry

If you want to tinker and do a few things to make the motor breath just a bit better and perform a bit better there are a couple of things you can do. Just keep in mind that you will never get these early style heads to breath really well. You can only get them to breath a bit better.

The exhaust valves can be enlarged to 1 5/8. Use a decent small block Chevy exhaust valve, they are the same. Hog out the valve bowel a little bit. Not too much, just a little larger. Three angle valve job and Blend and polish a bit. On the combustion chamber side, in the exhaust valve pocket. If you run your finger down against the far wall, you will feel a slight little bump. Flow stalls at the bump, about .300 lift. You will have to relieve and slightly unshround the pocket anyhow for the larger valves. Take this bump out and smooth the wall.

Intake valve side, use an intake for a 50-52 powerglide equipped 235. It’s a 1 15/16 valve. Same routine as the exhaust. Three angle valve job, hog out the bowel just a little, blend the cuts and polish. Do a little polishing of the combustion chamber. Don’t get carried away, just a little smoothing.

On the intake port side of the head, you can carefully machine down the casting bump that helps hold the intake manifold retaining rings. Don’t go crazy here either. Install the rings and to the extent the casting is beyond the rings, grind it down. If using a new style Clifford intake 2x2, you can remove the retaining casting entirely as the Clifford does not use retaining rings.

You can polish the ports if you like. Again, no craziness here.

Headers, I love headers. I love how they sound. I have cut outs for mine and run them open once in a while. I have a pair of Clifford long tube style headers on my motor. I bought them in the early 80s when jack Clifford was still living. After he died, the fellow that was building all his headers disposed of jack’s header patterns so no more long tubes. But they do sell a shorter style true tube header. Not cheap but a real header. Other wise the Fenton’s or similar cast iron header. Me, I would stay away from those cheap headers. The design is not so hot, they are not true headers, and they are cheap and look cheap. Get something decent, you will be better off.

With a stock head, I found that they tended to run out of air around 4500 rpm. Some heads that I have run would not even breath that deep. With the above mods, my 261 head breaths up to around 5500 rpm. You can actually feel the motor run out of air when you get near 5500-6000.

235 Chevy rods are really only good to about 4800 rpm. I have run them as high as 6000 but don’t any more. 261 rods are a little bette. I have 302 gmc Rods in my 261. They are a lot of work and require custom pistons to use. But those are good to 6000 rpm or slightly higher (but no real benefit going that high, the head can’t breath that deep.

So if you want to tinker, go ahead. Have a ball. I do, I tinker incessantly with these motors. Do dive right in.

Why not ignore high RPM and build a long stroke torquer engine? Check out my thread on a 4 3/8" stroke 235- - - -270 cubic inches! It would use a tool steel NASCAR Carillo connecting rod with a 6.400" length and a Honda rod bearing.
Jerry

Jerry, I will! That very well may be my next build. My youngest son wants to build another motor. Although I don’t know what I will do with it when it’s done, the opportunity to show my youngest son, 21 years old, the joys, idiosyncrasies, and challenges of the old style Chevy 6 motors is too good to pass up. We are only here for a little while and so I won’t pass that opportunity up.

Do you remember what the title of your thread was?

"Almost a 261" It's in the HI-Po forum.
Jerry

Finster,

This information about your project is on the HAMB forum:

“A good reference for souping stovebolts is the old book "How to Hop Up Chevrolet and GMC 6 Cylinders" put out in 1951. Although dealing with the older stovebolts, the theory is very solid and applies well to the later 235 and 261. This is available as a reprint from Amazon. I heartily recommend this book. Also, a killer article from May 1955 Hot Rod magazine, "Soup That Chevy". This has detailed dyno tests at each step from mild to wild. You'll have to search for one of these, it took me a year to find a hard copy. Feel free to save my images in the next post.”

The HRM dyno results will show you what the potential really is and what each modification gains or loses. You are not the only one who doesn’t want to be another sheep doing what everyone else does. Cars run on the dry lakes of Southern California and on the Bonneville salt flats often have engines that you would expect to see only in a museum these days, like Hudson, Buick straight 8 and flathead 4 cylinder Fords from the 1928-34 era. Those “boat anchors” must produce some serious horsepower to run at the speeds they do. And then there is the 200 MPH Burt Munro 1920 Indian motorcycle featured in the movie “The World’s Fastest Indian”, a must-see for any motor head.

A very old buddy of mine from high school days over 55 years ago campaigns a 1929 Ford roadster with a pre-1935 4 cylinder Ford FLATHEAD power at Bonneville and over the years has inched his own record up to 125+ MPH in the V4 F/B STR (street roadster) class. The most dramatic performance by an ancient engine was turned in by the Poteet and Main streamliner. It set a class record of 300+ MPH with a single Landy built Ford FLATHEAD V8. That's 700 HP from an engine that made 85 HP stock. Wow! So, for a guy who wants to do something a little different the sky is literally the limit.

Have fun!

Thanks for the posts of encouragement and to you sour grapes 😝.

I research everything before I do it, sometimes to death but I usually have a good idea of what I can, potentially, be getting into. I am a tool and diemaker by trade, an engineer by education and inqusitive by birth. I like gadgets and gizmos and how things work, it fasicinates me to watch mechanical things work. This truck, sometime in it's life, had it's bed removed and a dump bed put on. I researched it, it was made by a company in the mid west that made grain handling equipment. It has a different set up than modern dump beds, but similar in principle.

The truck is in pieces in my gay-raj, tools too cold to handle for too long so I'm researching the list of things I put together over the winter that I may/need/want to do now that warm weather is coming. Who knows, I may just put it all back stock.....but I doubt. I have asked about the possibly extinct 17 inch traction tire on a previous thread. I am in the process of sandblasting the frame and after i paint it all pretty the axles go back in. I'm looking daily on Craigs for some 8 lug rims and tires so I can roll my frame around. I'm doing as much of this myself as I can, so far it's been everything.

I have gotten a lot of good info from these forums and I thank you for it. Like I wrote above, I still have a lot to do so expect to see more questions from me.

The Hot Rod article is about a 261 engine: Soupin' Up a 261 Engine, SOUP THAT CHEV (1954/55 261 truck engine)

It is a nice read, but I doubt that it can advise you on your 235 ("what to buy/do on my '56 truck with a 235 engine")?

Your 1956 235 most likely has the 261 cam in it, and your 235 most likely has a higher compression head than on an original 261.

My ignorant guess is that the best ways to "get more out of you 235" would be bigger displacement (bored cylinders) and careful, judicious, increase in carburetion.

The carburetion issue/options/opinions will give you headaches.
What is the engine serial number on your 1956 235?

I'll have to look at the serial #'s when I get home. I read somewhere about different heads that have different intake ports, can't remember if it was size or shape.

I'm not looking for a screamer by any means, I am very limited by the rear end in it and hoping to get tires for the original 17" rims. As I wrote above, I can't find traction tires in 17" that I like the look of. I have seen military 17" traction tires but just ain't all that thrilled about how they look. Not sure I want regular type front end tires on the back end either. Whenever I am done, I don't expect it to be seeing any snow.

Good morning Finster.

I looked briefly at the HRM article and it does seem to make specific reference to the 235 engine. Being a gray head I remember reading articles in HRM about performance improvements on the inline Chevy engines and seeing aftermarket parts. I think there is an inline performance forum that might have just the information you are looking for. You're a professional machinist and I'm just an amateur, but either way it's fun to make "eye candy" for our antique vehicles. If you have tig welding skills you could make your own stainless headers. If you get quality stainless tubing you'll know it wont rust and stainless tubing welds beautifully. It does get slightly yellowed from exhaust heat but that just calls attention to the fact that the viewer is looking at a stainless steel work of art.

I have 17" artillery wheels on my restored '36 Chevy PU and one drawback is that 17" narrow tires are not common items. There were also 15" artillery wheels even back in the day and tires might be a lot easier to find in that size.

Because of what I've seen at El Mirage dry lake on the California Mojave desert and on the Bonneville salt flats it seems that your 235 has the potential to do just what you want and also be an interesting project for you.

To modify your 235 engine for Bonneville (as those examples were):
1. throw away all the original parts
2. add $100,000
3. come back when that's not enough

Good morning Panic.

I think the point of using out of the ordinary engines is to be creative and have fun. Here's an article that mentions Bob Stahl of Huntington Beach, California.

https://www.deseretnews.com/article...dream-of-perfect-slippery-race-cars.html

I know him because he's a very close neighbor of one of my sons. Bob has an unblown VW bug engine powered VW bug that has run over 159 MPH on the Bonneville salt flats. He has a modest home machine shop with the basics, lathe, milling machine and welders. Using those basic tools to make everything for his engine but the heads and crankshaft and parts for the chassis/body to make it safe at those speeds he has had great success and continues to improve his performance.

Bonneville and the California dry lakes are among the last refuge of home built race cars because other forms of racing have been taken over by the big spenders and corporate entities. It is nothing short of amazing to see what home fabricators continue to bring to Bonneville and the dry lakes. Each year my buddy who runs at Bonneville buys me a souvenir photo calendar and you'd be really impressed at the variety of the creations that run there, how good they look and how fast they go. They vary from Studebaker pickup trucks to streamliners. In drag racing a top fuel run is over now in 3 seconds and change and the sportsman classes (gas coupes and sedans, altereds, street roadsters, etc) are long gone.

Sorry for the tardiness in my reply, we recently had the second Nor'Easter roll through, looks like a bomb want off.

I think i have a run of the mill 235. Ser # 02I80 67 F56V A, casting 3837004 GM 8 CON 4 B236
I couldn't find a reference for the 7004 casting on the sites I referenced.

Head 3836848 GM 28 B5(8)* 848 85 * I doesn't look like the rest of the cast '8', kinda maybe a 9?


Ray, thank you for the references and info.

Engine Serial Number:02I8067 F56VA
http://www.1954advance-design.com/chev-specs/1956-t-ser.pdf

F56VA = Engine Serial Number
F = Flint MI, engine assembly plant
56 = 1956
VA = 3600 truck with RPO 227 (11" diameter heavy duty clutch)
(truck engines came with mechanical lifters from factory)

B236 = Engine Date Casting Code
B = February
23 = 23rd
6 = 1956

What are the Photo numbers and code names for these numbers: B5(8)* 848 85 *?
Can you attach/post photos for these?

Head: 3836848 : 1956-1962 head casting code
Block: 3837004 : 1955-1957 block casting code (used on car/truck engines)
http://www.1954advance-design.com/Stovebolt-engine/casting-numbers.html

Aaaarrgh! I have just spent the better part of the last hour trying to resize the picture on an android device.

The numbers are above the distributor, between cylinders 2 and 3, just below the boss the valve cover fits into.

I'll keep trying to resize it.

Does the code "numbers" on your engine have all of these characters/symbols/spaces?

B5(8)* 848 85 *

No. The paranthesis are mine. The number inside doesn't look like the rest of the 8 's , the lower circle on the (8) is mishappened, actually the number isn't as crisp as the rest at all. It could be a 9 but there is cast material closing the lower loop, it's rough almost like sand somehow was missing from the sand mold when it was poured. It is definitely parent material.

darn, still can't find how resize on android....

Finster, email the photo to me (my address is in my profile).

Please answer this question (look at the link in my post above):
" What are the Photo numbers and code names for these numbers: B5(8)* 848 85 * ?"

I'll post your photo here after I receive it, and after you post an answer to the question.

Attached are photos of Tom's "848" head.

And, here are my interpretations.
Please correct and clarify, if necessary.

That "848" head casting code head was used from 1956-1962/63 on 235 engines.

B-12-3 = datecasting code: February 12th 1963 (probably an end-of model "year" 235
head/engine, or a replacement 235 head).