Glowing headers is almost always a rich condition because the fuel burns in the headers causing them to heat up.. people saying lean causes headers to glow is a old wives tale
No it is not. I experianced this last week when I broke in my friends 351W. The carb we had on it was not calibrated for that motor (it was used on his mild 302 b4)so the headers started to glow orange. I closed the choke manually to make the car run rich and the glowing went away. After that I changed the springs and metering rods in the carb to fatten up the fuel mixture. Problem solved.
No it is not. I experianced this last week when I broke in my friends 351W. The carb we had on it was not calibrated for that motor (it was used on his mild 302 b4)so the headers started to glow orange. I closed the choke manually to make the car run rich and the glowing went away. After that I changed the springs and metering rods in the carb to fatten up the fuel mixture. Problem solved.
I just got off another post about glowing headers, seemed to me it was a rich condition or super retarded timing... If your motor was running hot enough internally (lean condition) to make the headers glow red , wouldn't the rest of the block start glowing red? Wouldn't the pistons melt? This just seems crazy, it has to be fuel burning INSIDE the headers, and not the cylinders, hence a rich condition, or super retarded timing. Anyone have that dyno vid of the chevy truck running boost and nitrous, the headers were glowing red there as well, I would assume on the kind of power levels he was putting out that his tune was prolly pretty spot on(1004ft/lb's of torque if I remember correctly). I think your buddies car is just running a bit rich, which is fine since he hasn't had it tuned yet, better rich than lean, especially in his case... Heres a little experiment you can try at home to simulate whether the headers are glowing red because of a lean condition and the cylinder is getting too hot, or a rich condition and the fuel is burning inside the headers. Take a long thin bolt and thread a couple of nuts on to the end of it (the end where the head is). Hold it with your plyers by the nuts (no laughing) and heat the tip of the bolt with your cigarette lighter. The tip will eventually glow a bit and the nuts will remain their original color. Observe how much of the bolt is glowing. Now allow the metal to cool and heat the opposite side (while still holding the nuts with your plyers, they are acting like a heat sink, same as your block) and see how much of the bolt, if any will glow red. Heres the point, heat radiates outward from a focal point, ie, the point where the metal touches the flame (like INSIDE your headers). It takes a considerable amount more energy to heat a couple nuts attached to plyers and a bolt than it does to heat the end of a bolt. Doesn't it make sense that if the headers were glowing red, and the heat source was coming from INSIDE the engine block (think of a little lighter inside your engine block trying to heat your headers from the cylinder), that the block would glow red and lots of things would melt and catch fire? You're running rich... Hope that made sense, whenever I read this stuff a couple days later I'm like "What the hell was I saying?!?!?"
i dont think the problem here is timing... On some occasions, I F'ed up and put my timing at 4 degrees base... It did run like crap, but never did my headers glow from that...
I just got off another post about glowing headers, seemed to me it was a rich condition or super retarded timing... If your motor was running hot enough internally (lean condition) to make the headers glow red , wouldn't the rest of the block start glowing red? Wouldn't the pistons melt? This just seems crazy, it has to be fuel burning INSIDE the headers, and not the cylinders, hence a rich condition, or super retarded timing. Anyone have that dyno vid of the chevy truck running boost and nitrous, the headers were glowing red there as well, I would assume on the kind of power levels he was putting out that his tune was prolly pretty spot on(1004ft/lb's of torque if I remember correctly). I think your buddies car is just running a bit rich, which is fine since he hasn't had it tuned yet, better rich than lean, especially in his case... Heres a little experiment you can try at home to simulate whether the headers are glowing red because of a lean condition and the cylinder is getting too hot, or a rich condition and the fuel is burning inside the headers. Take a long thin bolt and thread a couple of nuts on to the end of it (the end where the head is). Hold it with your plyers by the nuts (no laughing) and heat the tip of the bolt with your cigarette lighter. The tip will eventually glow a bit and the nuts will remain their original color. Observe how much of the bolt is glowing. Now allow the metal to cool and heat the opposite side (while still holding the nuts with your plyers, they are acting like a heat sink, same as your block) and see how much of the bolt, if any will glow red. Heres the point, heat radiates outward from a focal point, ie, the point where the metal touches the flame (like INSIDE your headers). It takes a considerable amount more energy to heat a couple nuts attached to plyers and a bolt than it does to heat the end of a bolt. Doesn't it make sense that if the headers were glowing red, and the heat source was coming from INSIDE the engine block (think of a little lighter inside your engine block trying to heat your headers from the cylinder), that the block would glow red and lots of things would melt and catch fire? You're running rich... Hope that made sense, whenever I read this stuff a couple days later I'm like "What the hell was I saying?!?!?"