I totally agree, the ebay/china stuff has a bad rap , but like you said its a good starting point, can replace/upgrade parts as they break or funds allow. Hopefully have mine boosted this summer, only looking to run like 6-8 psi
yes, their kits are really nice, but i just didnt feel like spending that kind of money, these headers are a copy of HP or HPPs old shorty turbo headers. Hellion uses stock manifolds, yes you can make good power with stock manifolds but if im building a car, to this extent, its gonna get headers lol. Only worried about the kit cracking due to flexing, i am in the process of designing a brace to help this issue. I am going to cut the flex coupler out of the kit and that should help with this issue, plus mounting a tab to bolt to the bottom of the timing cover, off of the down pipe to help with support, a mixture of these things should help with cracking. No guarantees, but we will see.
I also see kits out there using mile steel or aluminized steel, both will rust and cause just and many problems as cracking and look like ****. The best option is building it from scratch with good materials. The entire coldside and hot side is built from scratch with good materials except the 2 merging pipes. so as i stated above, worst comes to worst i rebuild those 2 sections. it was worth the $200 imo.
I was very pleased with the fitment to be honest. I am running a UPR tubular k member and no ac. the kit is designed to run the down pipe on the drivers side, it says you cant have ac and can keep your power steering, which i did. but i dont see any possible way to run the down pipe on the drivers side, thats why it wraps back around to the passenger side.
They only complaints i have is my kit did not come with vbands like it was suppose to, and its been a PITA to try and deal with the company i got the kit from, very poor customer service, Time reaction out of California. IF any of you have worked with vbands/flanges you know they are all designed together, you cant really put a vband from one kit on a different flange. so i think i found ones that will work for now, and hoping it will not leak. but again, worst comes to worst i will rebuild it with new bands/flanges.
here is a pic of how i modified the headers from 4v to 2v, while keeping the entire kit in the same location.
We made a brace to hold the entire kit in the same location relative to the motor, while being able to unbolt the headers. (if this makes sense) Once the brace was bolted on the flange we could remove the headers and modify them without loosing the location of the kit to the motor. 4v flanges are oval, 2v is circle, so we cut each primary back where the tube returned back to circle, then added in new circle tubing back up to the new flanges. it was a PITA, have to be very careful that doing this doesnt throw off the way the kit sits in the engine bay, as it only had a 1/2" clearance from the flange to the water pump pulley. and be careful to double check after every weld thats put down because it starts to pull the metal.
sry, i tried to explain it the best i could, here are some pics to help.
Pic of the mount we made to keep the kit stationary as we took the headers off
here is a pic of the new 2v flanges
here is a pic of the compleated header, as you can see, the shiny metal is the kit, the dull metal is the new tubing we welded in, where shiny meets dull metal is where each primary returned back to circle from oval, where we spliced each new piece in.