Traditional Rods? Where's the spaghetti headers?

Was recently over at a friend's house and saw this picture hanging on his garage wall. He thought it was taken around the early 40's. We were talking about the car when he mentioned the spaghetti headers, a term I haven't heard mentioned for a long time.

I wonder how many HAMBers know what those are.

 

Well, I do ..... and I think the reason you havent seen the design on cars built lately is because guys don't have a way at home to bend the pipes, or that they are "follow-the-trend" in styles, but stay tuned...you will see a few

 

anyone have a different pic that shows them clearly? I can hardly see anything.

 

2 words "flexible tubing"

The stuff isn't really that common any more. People kinda frown on that now.

And frankly it always looked like ****...

 

My take (and take it for what its worth since I wasn't there) is that the serious racers sometimes used the flexpipe headers because it made pulling the engines easier. You could probably just unbolt the header from the block and push it out of the way.

Looking through old mags you see those headers used quite often on real racers. I can remember pics of an Ardun powered 34 3-window with them.

I think the flexpipe got a bad rap when the local gook-wagons started to use it for the ENTIRE exhaust system.

My bro is currently using a 2-foot piece on each side as the connector from the cone header to the muffler underneath on his "kitschy" Model A. They probably provide a nice vibration reducing effect, if you could ignore the jolts from the rear axle hitting the frame.


- alchemy

 

the flexible tubing looks like Honest Charlie/J.C. Whitney **** to me,
cheap shlockrod stuff,
brings to mind soupcan and muffler clamp connections..

not the Deuzenberg/Cord pipes, (and others, ie tractors, stationary motors etc.) where it was for isolation of soft mounted motors and hard mounted exhaust.

give me the gentle curves of bedstead tubing any day,
or large radius sweeps made with sand filled tube and heat.

Paul

 

haha so who do I trust here? If it IS flextube, you dont exactly need an ****nal of machinery haha

 

I don't know about the stuff they used on Cords and Duesenbergs but the flexpipe you'd get at napa would be flexible for a few heat cycles and runs through rain and snow/salt and then it would rust into position and become firmpipe.

 

If you've never heard a nitro-burning flathead with spaghettis, you've missed one of the great sounding race motors.

 

I do believe the stuff used on big rigs, boats and such are made of stainless.

if done right and for a purpose, like when you have a heavy solid mounted muffler or exhaust pipe hard mounted to the frame, and use stainless tubing
it might work..astheticly

the cheap **** looks like cheap ****..
'course some people do try for the look..
or can't help but build in that theme..

not that there is anything wrong with that..

 

I was talking about the flexible exhaust pipe that a lot of people used back in the good old days. I think it was just an easy way to route the exhaust system.

60's Style......

I agree with your comment about soup cans and muffler clamps being a ****py way to fix a muffler. I used coffee cans and bailing wire to repair the leaks in my gl*** packs.