Originally Posted by HDDP
Firebase: Unfortunately that's what I'm going to have to do. Thankfully I found a company that is deeply involved in the racing community (not the wannbe tuner community) that is willing to work with me on this project. I was duly impressed by the fact that they have their own race engine spec form to fill out so the can do an engineering reference and flow analysis on the design.
The company is called Burns Stainless. I have uploaded the "race engine spec form" for the Crossfire for those of you who may need it in the future. Even though they are going to spec out the pipes, mergers, collectors etc, I will still have to hire someone to build the headers. I will keep everyone posted...
It's a work in progress and my bank account is only so deep !!!
HDDP,
I'm sorta new here, but have been in the performance industry for over 20 years. Burns has a terrific name, but I would personally be wary of stainless headers on a SC app car. The heat cycling that would occur makes T304 very brittle, and they WILL crack over time.
There are alot of performance exhaust companies in So Cal, you might try hitting a few of them up about building a run of headers. I am HEAVILY involved in the Dakota RT group (was president of the club...) and we have had a few people that have gone out and had small runs of custom parts made for us (Fuel rails, headers, TB's etc etc... So I know what you are up against.
Try Spintech, they were the ones who did our larger tube headers. Also a company called Leach performance (San Diego IIRC) who was building most of the headers for Mopar Performance.
Mild Steel, and coated, you should be able to come in under $1K easily... We were getting our coated V8 headers for 700 ish.
edit: Try Cometic gaskets for your header/collector gaskets too... impregnated mesh type gaskets that work really well, and they can custom make them to spec.
Danno