Headers for 88 Beretta

pdentrem

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This is a custom set of headers for the 88 Beretta 2.8 V6 w/5sp.

Built these in 1992 and sold them in 2007 to another Beretta owner. The car went to recycler and I was not just going to let them go for nothing. All the original welds was done by an expert welder. I would cut a piece to fit and at lunch he would weld that next piece, and so on. I would grind the welds and fit etc until we were done. You can tell my bad weld job on the rr set where I had to change the angle of one pipe to clear the motor mount.

The frt and rr sets are 1.5" pipe but in two different lengths. The difference between the frts and rr was 4". The tech people at Hooker suggested this to help fatten up the torque curve above and below 3000 rpm. It worked! the engine would come to life at 2500 and pull to the rev limiter, where before it was closer to 2800. The other advantage was increased HP, About 20 HP at peak, or the other way to look at it was going from 32 mpg to 37 mpg if I kept my foot out of it. Hard to do in the beginning.:))

I also had modified the cat per Popular Hot Rod's article back in the 80s, where increasing the lenght of the tapered section inlet and outlet of the cat from 2" OD pipe and 2" long to 3' OD pipe 6" frt and 5" rr, which then connected to 2.5" OD to the back, reduced the backpressure while the car still passed emissions with no issues. Instead of using just the center 2" or so inches of the matrix (about 25%) now the exhaust was using about 80% based upon the carbon traces on the face of the matrix.
Pierre

All shiny and new, mounted on my jig engine
headers-when-new.jpg

Would you believe there is a set of headers under here?
all-installed.jpg

Note that the ignition was moved to above the expaust ports to give room for the pipes.
another-view-all-in.jpg

Frt Set
Frt-set.jpg

Rr set
rear-set.jpg

New collector to cat pipe
Flexjoint.jpg

headers-when-new.jpg Flexjoint.jpg Frt-set.jpg another-view-all-in.jpg all-installed.jpg rear-set.jpg
 
Nice! They look like they've been ceramic coated.

How'd they sound? As I recall a stock 2.8 had a distinctive sick tractor burble sound to it. Decent motors though. A buddy of mine has 340k miles on his 2.8L Pontiac...

John
 
Yes they were ceramic coated otherwise they would have not lasted more than 5 yrs. The exhaust note was so different that the neighbors sure knew that I was in the area. No V8 sound but a lot better than stock.

The 2.8, 3.1 family are long lasting engines. When I traded in the Beretta I had 193k with the engine never opened up and original clutch and tranny.

I built a 3.2 V6, that's a 2.8 block with 3.1 crank, 3.4 rods, 3.4 main caps and 30 over. It is in a 85 Jeep Cherokee with a Paxton Supercharger with 7 lbs peak boost and uses a stripped sequential fire injection system. It kicks butt. Has somewhere over 300k currently. I have a picture somewhere of this one, have to find it.
See the topic "85 Jeep Cherokee with Blower" in this same area.
Pierre
 
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