BBK Shorty Headers Question

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bigred90gt

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EDIT: Nevermind

I think all that needs to be said has been said. I think there’s enough information available between here and any place you can find product reviews that one could make an informed decision, no matter which way you go.

I’m gonna finish my beer, then have a glass of bourbon.
 
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EDIT: Nevermind

I think all that needs to be said has been said. I think there’s enough information available between here and any place you can find product reviews that one could make an informed decision, no matter which way you go.

I’m gonna finish my beer, then have a glass of bourbon.

Sorry if we made you drink lol ....

:cheers:

But drink one for me :happy175:
 

bigred90gt

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No ...but it's not just 2 or 3 people complaining about the exact same issue ... go on youtube and look at the videos about bbks ... you get what you pay for simple as that and when you weld something and heat comes into the equation those welds better be damn perfect ... very easy to compromise the integrity of a metal when it comes to welding especially in the areas that the bbks seem to always fail ....

So, what is the common failure mode and what area? What is it you believe would cause this failure in the welding process? How do you come to the conclusion that it is “very easy to compromise the integrity of the metal when it comes to welding”?
 
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map, what is the common failure mode and what area? What is it you believe would cause this failure in the welding process? How do you come to the conclusion that it is “very easy to compromise the integrity of the metal when it comes to welding”?

Oh so you are not done ... ok here it goes ...

Look up the videos on youtube of where the leaks come from ... they are all at the welds ... when you heat up metal and you don't move fast enough you burn right through the metals fact ... that is what can cause these pinsize holes in the welds or the surrounding area of the welds ...

Not enough heat and your welds wont stick ... too much and you can burn right through it and cause the metal to become weak ..
 
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So, what is the common failure mode and what area? What is it you believe would cause this failure in the welding process? How do you come to the conclusion that it is “very easy to compromise the integrity of the metal when it comes to welding”?


And even the JBA headers have that same issue with the welds leaking not just BBKs ...
 

Brandon-w

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So, what is the common failure mode and what area? What is it you believe would cause this failure in the welding process? How do you come to the conclusion that it is “very easy to compromise the integrity of the metal when it comes to welding”?
Someone else made the map for me. I just edited it. Hope this clears things up.
*sits back waiting for explosion* [emoji23][emoji95][emoji1787] 77967856d0726ae91a0a9a018deb2ce0.jpg

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bigred90gt

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Oh so you are not done ... ok here it goes ...

Look up the videos on youtube of where the leaks come from ... they are all at the welds ... when you heat up metal and you don't move fast enough you burn right through the metals fact ... that is what can cause these pinsize holes in the welds or the surrounding area of the welds ...

Not enough heat and your welds wont stick ... too much and you can burn right through it and cause the metal to become weak ..

I was done talking about the headers, but figured I could get onboard with this separate conversation about weld quality, since that is a subject I am quite qualified to discuss. I’ve written and qualified weld procedures, and inspected welds for integrity visually and through various methods of NDE, and I’ve tested materials that have been welded, including base metal, weld meta and heat affected zone, for the effects of the welding process, for the better part of the last 15 years from a quality standpoint and from an engineering standpoint (no, I’m not an engineer).

when you burn through a weld, you dont get a pinhole, you get a burn through that is visible to the naked eye. If they’re burning through their welds, then selling the parts, that’s a while different conversation. The puddle literally falls out of the joint. I doubt they’re doing that. Burn through will not cause pin holes in the base metal (header tubes, flanges, etc) or in the heat affected zone (area of flange, pipe, etc that is structurally affected by the heat of the wed). Pinholes are usually an environmental issue (contaminants, gas issues, etc) and are in the weld typically. The weld puddle would fall out long before you had the input enough heat to cause problems in the base metal, especially at the thicknesses we’re talking about.
 

bigred90gt

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Someone else made the map for me. I just edited it. Hope this clears things up.
*sits back waiting for explosion* [emoji23][emoji95][emoji1787] 77967856d0726ae91a0a9a018deb2ce0.jpg

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I chuckled a bit
 
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Well to me from the looks in the videos and personally looking at bbk headers in the past the welds definitely had pin holes ... these pin holes were "not" visible to the naked eye and were only caught when we used wd40 to see where the actual leak was coming from ...

and the thickness of these flanges is not that thick ... very easy for someone that is mass producing them to burn through ...but hey what do I know lol I have never welded in my life lol
 

bigred90gt

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Haha good. [emoji16] I think we're all getting too serious into this lol. Too much time inside with family over Christmas, or Atleast that's my excuse lol.

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for sure.

My only beef has been calling them Chinese junk. I get that when someone experiences a quality issue with a product it will turn them off to that product. I’ve had the same problem with various things. And I get warning people of your experience. But I just can’t get onboard with someone calling an American company making products in America (regardless of quality) cheap Chinese junk. Call them cheap American junk, and that’s your opinion based on your experience. I may offer a counter opinion if I feel it is warranted (in this case I do, simply because of the difference in price and my own personal experience). Neither of our opinions carry any more weight than the other, they are just opinions based on experience. And for every horror story like yours, there’s tons of satisfied customers, and the same is true for almost every product made by almost any manufacturer.
 

bigred90gt

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Oh so you are not done ... ok here it goes ...

Look up the videos on youtube of where the leaks come from ... they are all at the welds ... when you heat up metal and you don't move fast enough you burn right through the metals fact ... that is what can cause these pinsize holes in the welds or the surrounding area of the welds ...

Not enough heat and your welds wont stick ... too much and you can burn right through it and cause the metal to become weak ..
I searched “BBK header failure ram 1500” and found one single video. Granted, I didn’t look through multiple pages, I looked through around 40 videos (scanned titles). Most of them had nothing to do with a ram, and the one that did was a blue ram that had some small bubbles coming from between the collectors (looked like he had a shop-vac blowing pressure in and using water to show the bubbles). That’s the only video I saw of a ram with a failure on BBK headers. That was a google search, and perhaps my google-fu isn’t as strong as I like to think.
 

bigred90gt

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Well to me from the looks in the videos and personally looking at bbk headers in the past the welds definitely had pin holes ... these pin holes were "not" visible to the naked eye and were only caught when we used wd40 to see where the actual leak was coming from ...

and the thickness of these flanges is not that thick ... very easy for someone that is mass producing them to burn through ...but hey what do I know lol I have never welded in my life lol

I know they’re not thick, which is why I said “at the thicknesses we’re talking about”. At these thicknesses, it would literally blow a visible hole in it before the base metal got hot enough to cause problems. I’m not saying pinholes can’t exist, quite the contrary. They do exist and I do not know of a single code that they would be accepted under. Then again, I’m not sure if a header manufacturer is welding to any kind of code. Hell, I’m not sure they’re doing anything more than a cursory visual check of their welds. Do they have a CWI on staff in their QC dept? I have no idea. Most likely they have some kind of in house acceptance criteria, and some “inspector” that looked at 500 collectors that day might have overlooked something. That’s a problem that needs addressing for sure, but that’s not a problem that would turn me off from their product, personally.
 
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bigred90gt

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I have spent far more time thinking about BBK headers and welds this evening than I ever cared to. I think I’m truly done with this one.

OP, best of luck whichever direction you go. Don’t let 2 horror stories on a random forum decide how you spend your money. Read reviews, lots of them, and make a truly informed decision. based on my experience, I would have no problem at all buying the BBK headers and have no issue suggesting them to someone looking that doesn’t want to spend $800+.
 
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