From what I understand there is one big difference between them, if you look at the photo you’ll notice that the manifold (top) go straight into one pipe and the headers (bottom) each have a bit of pipe and then go into one, from what I learned headers allow the exhaust gases to flow better because they aren’t being pushed into one pipe at the start, someone here will explain this better but I hope this helps
you’re right. the physics behind the header’s effectiveness is the separation of exhaust flow between adjacent cylinders. lets use a cross plane v8 as an example. my v8 has a firing order of 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8. in terms of cylinder banks, that’s RLRRLRLL. see how there are two instances of a cylinder bank having two exhaust pulses in a row? that causes a spike of higher pressure in a standard exhaust manifold, which causes issues with high-speed exhaust scavenging desired for efficiency. a header solves this problem by physically separating the charges until they are far enough downstream to negligibly affect the next exhaust stroke. a side-effect of good headers is that the signature v8 exhaust burble is lost. of course you can have headers for all kinds of piston engines, I’m just talking about my ford v8 because it’s a good example.
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From what I understand there is one big difference between them, if you look at the photo you’ll notice that the manifold (top) go straight into one pipe and the headers (bottom) each have a bit of pipe and then go into one, from what I learned headers allow the exhaust gases to flow better because they aren’t being pushed into one pipe at the start, someone here will explain this better but I hope this helps
you’re right. the physics behind the header’s effectiveness is the separation of exhaust flow between adjacent cylinders. lets use a cross plane v8 as an example. my v8 has a firing order of 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8. in terms of cylinder banks, that’s RLRRLRLL. see how there are two instances of a cylinder bank having two exhaust pulses in a row? that causes a spike of higher pressure in a standard exhaust manifold, which causes issues with high-speed exhaust scavenging desired for efficiency. a header solves this problem by physically separating the charges until they are far enough downstream to negligibly affect the next exhaust stroke. a side-effect of good headers is that the signature v8 exhaust burble is lost. of course you can have headers for all kinds of piston engines, I’m just talking about my ford v8 because it’s a good example.
Ah that helps a lot thank you