
This step is important because the gasses produced from the combustion process aren’t safe to be emitted into the environment. It inhales the gasses generated during the combustion process and then sends them out to the catalytic converter. Some mechanics describe the exhaust manifold as the “lungs” of the engine. An easy, effective customization is coating the exhaust manifold with a ceramic-type finish or heat-resistant finish. They are made of mild steel or stainless steel, so a slight step up from what the factory provides you. When gearheads tweak and improve their manifold, they add after-market tubular exhaust manifolds known as headers. This design helps the exhaust manifold last longer than most parts of your car. They undergo extreme, constant stress with the temperature changes under the hood. What Makes Up the Exhaust Manifold?Įxhaust manifolds are made of a simple cast iron or stainless steel. Your exhaust manifold is crucial to the proper performance of your exhaust system, and we’re going to teach you more about it in this article. It is bolted directly to the engine block and funnels exhaust gasses to the catalytic converter. The exhaust manifold is the first section of the exhaust system. The processes occurring can be explained by the gas laws, specifically the ideal gas law and the combined gas law.Whether you’re upgrading your vehicle with a custom exhaust system or just curious how the exhaust system works, you can’t forget about the exhaust manifold. The goal of performance exhaust headers is mainly to decrease flow resistance ( back pressure), and to increase the volumetric efficiency of an engine, resulting in a gain in power output. Although this is cheap and fairly simple, it can lead to premature degradation of the manifold. Exhaust wrap is wrapped completely around the manifold.This is often used on performance production cars and track-only racers. A ceramic mixture is bonded to the manifold via thermal spraying to give a tough ceramic coating with very good thermal insulation.These are usually thin, so have little insulatory properties however, they reduce engine bay heating by lessening the heat output via radiation. Ceramic paint is sprayed or brushed onto the manifold and then cured in an oven.There are a few types of thermal insulation but three are particularly common: This decreases the amount of heat given off into the engine bay, therefore reducing the intake manifold temperature.

Polished stainless steel will also color (usually a yellow tint), but less than chrome in most cases.Īnother form of modification used is to insulate a standard or aftermarket manifold. Chrome plated headers are available but these tend to blue after use. They may be coated with a ceramic-type finish (sometimes both inside and outside), or painted with a heat-resistant finish, or bare. The most common types of aftermarket headers are made of mild steel or stainless steel tubing for the primary tubes along with flat flanges and possibly a larger diameter collector made of a similar material as the primaries. Headers that do not have collectors are called zoomie headers. These consist of individual exhaust headpipes for each cylinder, which then usually converge into one tube called a collector. For many engines, there are aftermarket tubular exhaust manifolds known as headers in American English, as extractor manifolds in British and Australian English, and simply as "tubular manifolds" in British English. heat shield bolt Ceramic-coated exhaust manifold on the side of a performance carĮxhaust manifolds are generally simple cast iron or stainless steel units which collect engine exhaust gas from multiple cylinders and deliver it to the exhaust pipe. Structure collecting an engine's exhaust outlets Diagram of an exhaust manifold from a Kia Rio.
