Exhaust System Shootout

Exhaust Shootout

How important is exhaust??? PARAMOUNT! There is nothing else on earth more of a bolt on enhancement than a proper exhaust system as you will see below in the following graphs. It amazes me when I see individuals stuff thousands of dollars into an engine, only to outfit it with a crappy inadequate exhaust system! They fail to realize that all the performance additives they threw at the engine increased the engine’s ability to inhale and burn the air/fuel mixture! They don’t realize that “What goes in must get out”, and if it doesn’t power will be trapped, heat will build up and they will smoke some valves! That’s ok, it just make them that much easier to beat and make them wonder why their 2,700cc engine was spanked by my 2,200!

I decided a few months ago to complete the most comprehensive exhaust system test ever attempted for the Type IV engine. With Tiger and the guys over at A-1 Muffler listening to our Type 4 world cry for a decent header that was affordable, the timing for the big test would be perfect. It would give us a great comparison on the same engine, the same day and all we would do is optimize the air/fuel ratio for each arrangements needs and drop the hammer on the dyno!

The engine's specifications:
2270cc MassIVe Type IV
9.9:1 CR
RAT 9520 dual pattern camshaft
RAT 7436 heads with 42x36 valves
Weber 44mm IDF carbs with 36mm Venturis
Mallory Unilite, Grey rate w 12/30 timing

This type of testing is very hard on an engine and this 2270 took 20 trips to 6500+ RPM for sustained amounts of time over a 3 day span and never missed a beat!

In the first tests I knew we would be seeing some good numbers from this engine combo! The first set of numbers were over 160HP and over 165 lb/ft of torque! With 3 optimization runs we got the fuel curve a mirror image of the torque plot and held a 13.8:1 AFR all the way to 6K- It was ready to get a brutal beating and scream results!

For years the marque in the Type IV exhaust world has been the Tangerine Superheader. We have used these headers on all displacements and until this test we had never seen a fully muffled system even get close to it’s performance! I had seen a 25HP gain on the same engine on my dyno with this header! The maker of this system is Chris Foley of www.tangerineracing.com and he is an awesome fabricator and the quality of his system is amazing.

On Monday January 24th, the Tangerine Superheader lost its crown and was finally beaten. The new A-1 header was able to do this easily by 8+ HP without us even trying to get more power from further tuning! I was so absolutely taken by surprise that I ran the tests again, and then again! I then tried to tune the engine to further take advantage of the Tangerine system but the more we tried the further we got from success. The Tangerine system and its design of 4-2-1 did show drastic differences in torque in the mid range, and had the flattest curves between 3-6500RPM, so while it may have lost its edge in peak numbers, it still has a great power curve. I have talked to Chris Foley, shared with him the findings and he has informed me that my test system is his older design. This has also sparked interest on his end to develop an even more advanced Tangerine system for us to test at a later date on a similar engine.

The other systems are pretty much self explanatory as they are similarly priced but the Turbo Thomas and BAS systems come from Europe and are more difficult to purchase and much more expensive with the current price of the dollar. I will give a brief description of each other system below.

A-1 Header
Made in the USA!
This system is amazing. Not very many times does any newly developed product make this type of statement. The fit and finish is great, especially for the price and the system bolted right on with no beating and banging. Since it has a set of stub pipes, just like the Tangerine it allows us the ability to more efficiently match exhaust ports for accurate flow and margins. The system fits any standard Beetle, or Ghia and we have other systems in development that will attain the same collector and runner lengths, but will be made to fit Early Type II and Type 3 vehicles outfitted with the Powerplant of the Future- The Type IV.
The Performance of this system speaks for it’s self. Nothing came within 9 HP of it! This header is 100% designed and tuned and its numbers illustrate that.

BAS
Made in Germany, this system has been the default system for many of my customers and while we knew its dual mufflers pulled some power, we never dreamed that we would see the vast power drops we did during this testing! The BAS fits OK, but sometimes hits beetle bodies and sometimes needs a “wrasslin” match to remove and replace. It’s a good header, and we have used hundreds, but it doesn’t compete with the A-1 in performance or fit. We even changed the mufflers to a Phase 9 silencer and even the magnaflow for direct tests (not posted here) but it didn’t measure up. The BAS system does not have stub pipes, but it does have a ton of tubing under the car that can be a pain to install.

Turbo Thomas
This British system doesn’t come with a muffler so I had to chop up the flange on the Magnaflow and make it work with the aid of the Tig welder and a band saw. This system didn’t perform as well as I thought it would, both with and without mufflers. The system is high quality and made of stainless steel. It does not have stub pipes so removal and replacement also involved a bit of “wrasslin”. The Performance speaks for its self. If we would have had a muffler tuned to the header we may have gotten better numbers and curves, we may work on that and try this system again in round 2 in a few months after a couple of manufacturers have had a chance to do some development.

Fat Performance
The system that we had for testing was actually for an offroad application and not for a Sedan. Due to this I did not feel that the results should be shared.

Also you will see the “Aero Turbine muffler” in some of the pics. We have chosen not to share this data either as it was apparent that this muffler needs quite a bit of header modification to ever be efficient on one of our header styles. It had a wild sound, but did not perform equal to its advertisement. I plan on sending it to A-1 and seeing if we can make some changes to compliment it.

If you are interested in this new A-1 header that we have worked with Tiger at A-1 to make, please email me at productdevelopment@aircooledtechnology.com and I will add you to my list for our group buy of 20 systems at an introductory price from A-1 that I have arranged!

The future of the Type IV conversion has never been brighter than the present, and with this new development with exhaust the Type IV is even easier to accomplish!

Continue reading below for our dyno pulls, recording the results of our testing!

Jake Raby
“Excellence through Research”

"Muffled" Headers

RUN #03: A-1 HEADER WITH 3 INCH MAGNAFLOW RESULTS