Fleabay headers, Part Deux

B6/7 S4/RS4
#1

So once again, I was dreaming of a set of headers that maybe came off a crashed car, and the owner didn’t know what he had and might be selling on fleabay or craigslist or something for cheap. Just doing my wishful thinking rounds. I found these:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzI5WDEwNjU=/z/6l4AAMXQVT9S1Cld/$_57.JPG

I also noticed that the seller is local to me now, and not wanting to go through ebay, I figured a slightly more personal approach was in order. I contacted the seller through his facebook page, hoping I could stop by and see for myself:

Squid
Hey, I noticed that you guys are selling the XSP/SSAC headers for V8 S4’s. They look better than some early photos, so maybe they have been revised? May I stop by and check them out? And/or just check out the shop in general? Also, do you have VCDS? I need my B6’s keys recoded to the car after I installed a new CCM.

Thanks,

Jason

Other guy
I dont have a shop anymore

Just an online store

Squid
Okay, thanks. So if you are in Irving, can I see the headers? I can’t buy something that requires 20 hours of labor to install without seeing first.

Other guy
I dont stock these local anymore

No.one local was buying

Too much money shipping them all over the place

Squid
Okay, thanks. Good luck with sale.

Other guy
I sell them all the time and have them on all kinds of 4.2 engines now

No editing whatsoever was made to this, I’ll have you know. And yes; I gave him pink because I thought it was fitting. I was going to respond by asking exactly which other 4.2 engines these headers would fit, but I didn’t want to get combative when all I really wanted was an up close view. The auction says 17 units sold; I assume that’s not internal “purchasing” by himself or friends to drive the number up and make it look like a better sell. Assume . . . It just seemed to convenient to me that he sells them all the time, and has them on “all kinds of 4.2 engines now”, but can’t show me one.

So in any case, they do maybe look a little different to me than the initial, but still with the lousy collectors, very basic fitting, who knows. Also “321 flanges and 304 piping”; interesting. I was hoping for a real look at them, for several reasons, but what I found was what seemed to be a very unknowledgeable seller at best. At worst, well, this is America, land of capitalism and buyer beware [;)]

Anywho, more useless observation from your friendly neighborhood squid. Also, if you come across a used set of real headers, and you just can’t stand the sight of them any more, I can probably help you with that problem.

#2

Where have you been. Great to have you back.

The lowdown is that I was contacted by 2 different guys on AZ that tried the Xextra Shitty Pile of waste (xs) headers and they made less power then catless downpipes. Both guys were so passed that they bought this crap. NONE OF THEM fit. The one guy had to pay extra to have a shop cut and weld them to fit. All that to loose hp. The gullible dubshits think that because it’s long pipes they must work. Fact is when you lengthen the primary tubes on headers it looses top end power. Looks like the copycats didn’t know that and there banking that the other dubshits won’t know either.

He said he sells them all the time but nobody was buying them. That makes no sense. Good pass

#3

Hey, good to be back. I’ve been workin’, man! I finally caught a break. I’ve been lounging around AZ a little the past week and figured I had better pop in over here.

Any idea if anyone has yet taken JHM’s version 2 headers to the dyno? I would really like to see where the area under the curve shifts with bigger, shorter primaries. I doubt anyone would directly compare the V1 and V2, to get peak numbers and such, but at least we could judge the shape of the curve itself. Of course, we would have to find a V1 dyno with similar mod list, but I think there are a few of those around.

You guys might not like dyno’s for selling car parts, but dyno’s are where engines get tuned. There is value in a dyno plot; just not what most rice kids are looking for (or what some companies use them for!).

#4

Jason,

JHM gives a pretty good explanation on their website man. It may not be a dyno graph but I doubt that most people on this site are going to do that. 1/4 mile runs would be more likely.

[quote=“JHM’s website”]ABOUT THE REDESIGN
Our new headers are a mid-length style header with a larger primary runner size. Generally, longtube headers make more torque and short tube headers make more horsepower. Mid-length headers bring you the benefits of both. The larger primary sizes opens up the motor more leaving room for growth with supercharger kits, built motors, and more boost. Back in 2008 when we first came out with the headers, long tubes with smaller primaries were the way to go – we didn’t have our upgraded intake manifold yet, the exhaust systems for the platform were still small, and our tuning for the B6-B7 S4 4.2L V8 was still evolving. Once we came out with our upgraded intake manifold, we found that the OEM dual-runner design was able to give the motor a lot of torque. Then, we started to build the motors to handle more power and more boost and once we did this, we found that our headers from 2008 were corking the motor.
[/quote]
By the way, I tried texting you about the STE gauge system but you haven’t responded so I am assuming that you probably got a new phone number. Please PM me and we can work out the details.

#5

JimmyBones covered it with his explain. As for the dyno I think we all respect the dyno but we don’t respect how so many manipulate dyno sheets. It’s too easy to print a dyno sheet nowadays. The dyno results are just whatever the operator what’s them to be vs what was actually made. Too much abuse not enough truth.

#6

Jimmy - you have PM.

Jimmy + Justin - Saying in words that it “makes more power in the top end without sacrificing down low” doesn’t mean much of anything to me, to be honest. I mean, I believe them that it’s a good product just based on prior experience with their products, but few things in life make more power in the top end without sacrificing down low. Non-automatically-adjusting things just don’t tend to work that way. It’s like judging your tune by the unsmoothed line on the dyno. You can see things that you can’t feel in the car, like having your ignition timing map slightly off the mark. In this case, maybe a slight dip somewhere? I doubt you would feel the loss of 5-10 ft*lb in this car.

#7

I hear yeah I think the explanation was more to get you a general idea. It’s hard to know exactly what something looks like in those terms. It’s also hard to know exactly what sacrificing nothing down low means.

Header design wise. It’s clear to see what they have done and the outcome is relatively predictable. Long runners are more for before peak tq but hamper post peak tq hp levels. Midlength allows the peak tq to stay in the same range as was before the long tube design but the peak tq gets extended further in the upper rpm. The main focus is beyond the 5300 range. With jhm using the supercharger and built motors they extended the rev limit. Now that the car has more rpm you need to tune the headers for that upper rpm. Even the jhm intake manifold extends the usable area of upper rpm. This once again is why the china headers fail so hard. They don’t do anything but extend the primary tubes. Since they didn’t fix the length they don’t outflow free flowing catless dps and the worst part is the china headers kill upper rpm power below what catless dps make. Graphs are always pretty since we don’t have that I tried to paint the best picture in could.

#8

So if they are more worried about performing up to 7,500 or even 8,000 rpm, maybe what somebody like me would really want is a set of V1 headers. Just thinking out loud. I didn’t know they were actively targeting higher engine speeds per se. Also, I don’t even know the length of the factory connecting rods off the top of my head, but I thought piston speed/rod ratio/piston acceleration were already on the excessive end at the factory redline.

Personally, I wish they would just release the damned replacement electronic adjuster guide so that I could pull the trigger on a timing kit, and then I could decide what I want to do “while I’m in there” (probably nothing other than maintenance since I now have an NA8 to play with).

#9

From what jhm said and from what they built and from what we know. Looks like the v2 help give the car longer legs in the upper rpm range while extending the peak tq.

As for the piston to rod stroke ratio. No the S4 actually has a better ratio then the rs4 and the rs4 goes 1000 rpm more. The S4 TDC dwell time is perfect for boost.

I think to be honest with the addition of the intake manifold. Midlength headers offer a better payoff up top to complement the better flow. The Midlength headers are way longer then the stock manifolds so that already covers that down low tq

#10

The stage 1 SC S4s rev to 7200 rpms but the throttle is cut back to save the engine a ways before that. We learned this a long time ago with Axel when he went to the dragstrip and was short shifting.

I bring that up to say that I highly doubt that JHM is going much higher than 7200 rpms. The requirements for every 100 rpms past 6K rpms get exponentially higher and to a higher power. Also I have seen Beem mention a few times that the camshafts would not be ideal for 8K rpms either.

We all know that the SC can spin high enough for the RS4s that rev to over 8K rpms but they are an oddity.

After a little searching I found this information on the JHM website about their modified intake manifold:

[quote=“JHM’s website description of their intake manifold”]At the dragstrip - We ended running a best of 12.70 @ 111mph all motor (with our new intake manifold and our headers) which was a strong improvement over our previous best of 12.97 @ 109mph (with a stock intake manifold and stock exhaust manifolds). Both of these runs were with JHM Tuning, JHM Lightweight crank pulley, JHM intake spacers, JHM Lightweight Flywheel and JHM Performance Clutch. You may wonder about the affect the headers had on this track time, well the headers have been proven to only help with low RPM torque under 4000 rpm due to restrictions in the stock cylinder head. When racing the quarter mile we shift at 6500 rpm so the engine never gets below 5000 rpm which is where our intake manifold shines and allowed us to pick up 2 mph. The headers extra torque actually made our launch harder since the car had a tendency to spin the tires more easily than before. This torque is wonderful on the street but a handful to get a good clean launch. The bottom line is that with all the JHM bolt ons on our car the car is a lot more powerful than stock and has set every quarter mile record for all Motor S4s while being faster than many other company’s supercharger kits.
[/quote]
I have underlined and bolded an important section in my opinion.

#11

Hey guys,
As part of a bulk parts purchase from another audi owner who was cleaning out his garage, I have happened into a set of these XS Power headers. To be very clear, I did not buy them because “I wanted cheap headers”. I got them as part of a bulk purchase.

As such - I have thought about doing a new thread for funnsies/science, but the amount of flaming BS that comes when anyone ever talks about these parts has kept me at bay.

So, before I do anything, I will say that I am a JHM Supporter and have over $5K worth of their parts sitting in my garage waiting for a motorpull project not to mention everything that’s already on the car. This presents a unique opportunity to review for science.

However, I have no interest in all the bullsh!t that comes with even talking about parts like these. So, if everyone can be adults and consider it “for science” to prove once and for all that these are either complete sh!t or a viable cheap option, then I’d consider spending the time and effort to do it.

This would start with a dyno run of the car as it is today - complete with a parts list, a pile of photos of these headers and then a post “service/install” dyno run to see exactly what’s what.

The only reason I’d consider this is for the sake of ending these round and round wank fests filled with Ego, Speculation and BS that comes whenever someone says anything other than “JHM!” in the forums.

You’ll note a tinge of attitude in this post and it’s because I am floored at the pure hate that every thread related to these generates… none of you have experience with these parts, thus no one should be posting anything other than “Interested” or “Not Interested”.

#12

I would say after reading what Count Vohn posted here: http://audirevolution.net/forum/index.php?topic=3194.0 , that I wouldn’t even waste my time with installing them.

#13

Lolz

BS and hate. No its called understanding it takes more then just long pipes. When you know what goes into making headers work and what’s needed to actually make power over the stock manifolds you will soon see they are just long pipes and longer primary pipes are not ideal with out being truly equal length and without the much needed collector. These xs headers already have been dyno ed amd showed a loss I don’t know if you missed that part. Look at the B8 S4 guys. They got super cool headers too. Funny how when they got headers and they don’t work the B8 guys all hate too. Lol

Lol I actually can’t stop laughing. It’s already been shown they don’t work they don’t fit they are cheap and they don’t have all the same aspects of headers needed to make power but we are the ones that are hating. Lol

And to back up what b6dolphins4 said. When jhm made the headers they didn’t try to make them complex to make it just harder for themselves to build. We have all seen big money headers not make power because they lack power principles. These xs jokes are nothing more then an attempt to take advantage of people who don’t know better. It’s china it’s cut corners to try and not make the best product but the cheapest. It’s obvious due to how many revisions these china headers have gone through that now it’s just huge amounts of things left out to try and make them fit make them cheap and make them mass production. All not things you want in a precision part that needs to be exactly one way to really work

#14

Can you post links to threads that have actual facts - based on actual part installs?

As for everything else, that’s all I needed to hear!
thanks guys,
drive safe.

#15

Yes this has been done several times. All the same results. Two separate people have made threads on this. They showed r hey didn’t work and one set didn’t even come close to fitting. As usual xs sends fake people to the forums to try and push these. When they posts came out showing they didn’t work the fake xs members started trash and the threads were closed. Once SAC paid to advertise the threads magically dissipeared

#16

Some of that is likely due to XS’s clear attempted ripoff of the JHM design.

#17

Everyone in every thread I’ve found about these parts, always say’s the same thing “Someone, somewhere has done this, hated them and posted threads about it”. I have yet to find actual threads that contain actual facts of any kind. I’m not negating that these threads are real - I am asking, since you clearly say the exact same thing, for a link to a thread where anyone has actually gotten these parts, installed them, dyno’d and shows results (good or bad). In fact, I have not found a single thread where someone has done any of the above steps with the actual parts… just threads full of speculation and assumption.

To be very clear - I am not making a statement that these are good or bad (remember how I got them), I am just trying to add to the global knowledge of the community with a thread full of facts with the actual product itself. Hopefully educating the rest of the community - with FACTS - instead of speculation. And yes, we all know they ‘stole the design from JHM’ - so let’s prove they are sh!t (or not) with fact, to help all the new kids to this platform learn the truth. I have given no money to XS, nor do I support them stealing other companies designs. Which is why I want to do this and share the results.

So again - Post links to actual threads, with actual information from users that have actual experience with these headers.

#18

And I’m telling you the same thing others have said. They have been tested they didn’t make good power and the threads were removed or closed when SSAC became an advertiser. SSAC was later dropped as an advertiser due to it being proven that they don’t actually make anything they just try to knock everything off. Xs paid to have then removed and forum members that were actually XS employees or whatever were caught and called out. It’s simple. Nobody cares about the company that didn’t actually make anything. And they want a sucker like you or me to go prove if they work or not. Remember XS doesn’t care about the product they don’t care about the S4. If they actually made something don’t you think they should be the one testing it… Look at there track record. You keep asking for us to do the home work for you. Go research XS. It’s not like this is new.

You wonder why nobody cares and as you said hates XS. We already know what XS is about and how there products suck in all other platforms. We have seen them lie and get caught and called out. This is like the 5th revision of the XS headers. You know what the issue is… XS doesn’t care they keep putting o it parts saying the fit all kinds of cars and when they don’t and they don’t make power. XS doesn’t care. It’s all just a cheep knock off part. The biggest issue is they tried to knock off the jhm headers and it didn’t work… they can’t build them like jhm because XS is all about making things look like the original in hopes of getting some sucker like the guy who bought them before you.

Got read the thread b6dolphins4 linked. It talks about how jhm when they were actually developing the headers made a similar design and it lost power. Just like the people are saying about the XS.

In the end XS didn’t develop anything. They never test fit anything. They never tested anything. They tried to steal something and knock it off. The results are a clear huge compermise over the headers that work (jhm) you can see that just by looking at them. Between XS sending fake people into the forums to try and push the product with fake reviews the parts not being quality the results being buried by XS and the fact that XS didn’t do anything but try to knock off headers from a company that actually spent the time to pull motors test and test. XS isn’t a company that’s worth even talking about. XS didn’t test there product they didn’t develop that product they didn’t research that product. But you think testing the product because you didn’t see or didn’t know all that is needed. I say that nobody is going to think your a saint for try to prove or disprove a product from a company that has fucked over so , any people and stolen from so many more is a good idea

#19

Justin just said “They showed Once SAC paid to advertise the threads magically dissipeared.” Which I remember also seeing the thread when it still existed on AZ, but since being exposed, the thread has disappeared. I remember at least 2 separate members posting about installing them. One couldn’t even get them to fit and tried hacking them to work. Which I believe never got finished. As for the other guy I’m pretty sure after they were found to be trash, the op deleted the thread.

#20

Sorry, I must have been typing my post the same time as Justin. ^