The primary pipe of cyl.7 really is out of alignment, by a long shot; that is what causes the entire driver's side headers to skew to one side.
The difference in lenght is not a factor; this is done by purpose, as the primary with the tab usually is built a few mm longer, in order to allow the remaining 3 primaries to thermally expand inside of their collectors' recess, not creating any tension on the pipes themselves.
This is the main feature, which makes these Supersprint V8 headers unbreakable, yet lightweight at the same time.
It looks like some damage may have been occurred to that cyl. 7 primary pipe, either during shipping & handling process, or even before, when your headers assembly was packed, here at Supersprint in Italy.
In any case, we will send you a new one, in replacement of the current, tweaked one.
This will rectify your firment problem, once for all.
We also thank you for the photos; if it was not for those, it would have been difficult for us to adress the origin of the problem.
Jared at BMP has just sent me an e-mail notice about your fitment issue, anyway.
We will take care of the shipment of the replacement part, tomorrow.
Thank you for your patience.
Alessandro Gilli
Supersprint
Italy
The primary pipe of cyl.7 really is out of alignment, by a long shot; that is what causes the entire driver's side headers to skew to one side.
The difference in lenght is not a factor; this is done by purpose, as the primary with the tab usually is built a few mm longer, in order to allow the remaining 3 primaries to thermally expand inside of their collectors' recess, not creating any tension on the pipes themselves.
This is the main feature, which makes these Supersprint V8 headers unbreakable, yet lightweight at the same time.
It looks like some damage may have been occurred to that cyl. 7 primary pipe, either during shipping & handling process, or even before, when your headers assembly was packed, here at Supersprint in Italy.
In any case, we will send you a new one, in replacement of the current, tweaked one.
This will rectify your firment problem, once for all.
We also thank you for the photos; if it was not for those, it would have been difficult for us to adress the origin of the problem.
Jared at BMP has just sent me an e-mail notice about your fitment issue, anyway.
We will take care of the shipment of the replacement part, tomorrow.
Thank you for your patience.
Alessandro Gilli
Supersprint
Italy
The primary pipe of cyl.7 really is out of alignment, by a long shot; that is what causes the entire driver's side headers to skew to one side.
The difference in lenght is not a factor; this is done by purpose, as the primary with the tab usually is built a few mm longer, in order to allow the remaining 3 primaries to thermally expand inside of their collectors' recess, not creating any tension on the pipes themselves.
This is the main feature, which makes these Supersprint V8 headers unbreakable, yet lightweight at the same time.
It looks like some damage may have been occurred to that cyl. 7 primary pipe, either during shipping & handling process, or even before, when your headers assembly was packed, here at Supersprint in Italy.
In any case, we will send you a new one, in replacement of the current, tweaked one.
This will rectify your firment problem, once for all.
We also thank you for the photos; if it was not for those, it would have been difficult for us to adress the origin of the problem.
Jared at BMP has just sent me an e-mail notice about your fitment issue, anyway.
We will take care of the shipment of the replacement part, tomorrow.
Thank you for your patience.
Alessandro Gilli
Supersprint
Italy
Alessandro:
Thank you very much for your quick reply and action. I don't look forward to removing the driver side headers - they are a real bugger as you know!-
I will follow-up with pictures after installation of the new number 7 primary tube. It will be interesting to see if this change corrects the header clearance issue.
Again, thank you!
PS: Where else but on the M5Board can you post a message and connect VFR-direct to the source of fine international suppliers?!
I'm glad that he took care of you and Michael, however, I feel ignored as my posts and issue have not been addressed this day, I have not received any "new" replacement parts as you two have, and my issue remains. Not the type of customer service that I, as OP, would rave about.
Sorry for the additional post, but I forgot to thank Aaron at Brecus Motorsports. Aaron jumped right on this issue after my initial post and contacted Supersprint directly.
Good companies sell great parts at competitive prices. But only great companies, and great people, respond so quickly when customers experience the inevitable problem.
I'm glad that he took care of you and Michael, however, I feel ignored as my posts and issue have not been addressed this day, I have not received any "new" replacement parts as you two have, and my issue remains. Not the type of customer service that I, as OP, would rave about.
But, I am glad you guys got taken care of.
M55555, first let me say thanks for initiating this thread as I, and obviously others, have benefited from it. I have read and reread this entire thread, studied all of the pictures (except those posted by Allesandro - these 404???). There is a great deal of information here to process. Being an Engineer, I have a great number of questions regarding proper fitment and the result if the fitment is not right. I am not significantly concerned over the loss of the use of Wicked5, as I have several other vehicles to drive - but I do want to take a spin with the new headers. I also have a large garage with a lift. I am going to spend some time tonight making some basic measurements regarding fitment of the headers. Perhaps I can find something of use to you...
Hey J - here's the side picture, with the camera on the ground:
M55555,
Sorry for not having replied to your posts, but we had assumed that everyone with a gound clearance issue had been able to solve his problem, up to date, by pushing the collectors all the way in, until they bottom against the primaries.
This is the one and only fitting condition of the headers, which ensures the proper ground clearance.
We had posted plenty of photos and informations, a few months ago, and did not follow up; we took for granted that it cured the fitment issues.
For some reason, the photos are now deleted from the thread, however we can post those again, in case anyone wishes to.
Now, from the photos of your own M5, your collectors definetly look like they are NOT bottomed out.
The additional thermal coating on the tubes may have shrinked the tolerance excessively, making the pipes bind before they hit bottom, but this is only our speculation.
Our advice is to remove the collectors, insert the donut rings into the swaged ends, place the pressure plate on top of the rings, and measure the total amount of the recess, from the flange outer face, all the way down to the enlarged end of the 4 collector's pipes.
Then mark the same distance on the primaries, from their ends forward.
This is the amount of travel that you want your collectors to go in, when bottomed; or also, the "installed dimension" of the headers.
When the collectors are fully seated, they will be flush with the chassis, just like on the other members' M5s.
Ground clearance problem solved.
This is a simple, straightforward process.
If the collectors cannot slide freely enough, taking some more force than the bare hands', we suggest to use a wood block and a dead blow hammer to help them on.
If you feel an excessive resistence, your collectors are binding; in this case, you have to stop right here, and inspect for the cause; look for a sharp pipe end, or for a small crease inside of the collectors recesses. These may cause the binding. Also, remove any paint or coating from the pipes' mating surfaces, completely.
They are stainless steel, and won't rust, anyway. The coating definetly is overkill.
If you need a new set of donut rings and pressure springs, let us know.
We will send you a new set.
These parts usually do never wear out, if the headers is installed properly, on the first try.
However, repeated removals and installs may do some damage to the sealing surface, and weaken the springs.
I don’t know if I am helpin or hurtin, but here goes (sorry about the length):
I took some time last night with an objective of coming up with a fitment tolerance stack up for the SS header installation. I limited my thinking to the primary tube set and collector as this pretty much sets the ground clearance for the installation unless you really screw up the connector pipes, cat, and muffler set. A list of issues which could impact ground clearance includes; primary tube set insertion depth into collector, angular alignment of primary tube set with the collector, motor mount height, and transmission mount height.
Note that I did not consider header component manufacture tolerance due to comments by Alessandro. However, given the jig-fixture method used by SS I would expect tolerances of ¼ inch or less in length and 1 to 2 degrees for bends. Under these assumptions the result would have negligible impacts on ground clearance. I looked quickly at thermal expansion, but in aggregate this represented length movements on the order of 1/8 inch or less over our operating temperature range.
This whole issue is vehicle ground clearance, however, I would like to take the discussion of suspension heights out of the picture by referencing all of my discussion to the unibody frame member. For a simple reference my car is at or near the “stock” ride height which gives me a “unibody to ground” clearance of roughly 5 ¾ inches as illustrated by the following picture…
All my further measurements are referenced to the unibody frame bottom to make measurements more transferable. A starting measurement becomes the distance between the bottom set of primary pipes to the bottom of the unibody frame. The addition of a collector to the primary tubes will “add” to this. For my header installation the distance between the bottom of the unibody frame and the lowest extent of the primary tubes is 1 ¾ inches as illustrated by the following picture…
From the picture above it is clear that if the collector, when attached to the primary tubes, adds more than 1 ¾ inches in depth to the header assembly – we will begin to impact vehicle ground clearance. (By the way, this measurement was the same on my passenger side primary tubes, which was a surprise to me. I thought that the passenger side header was lower than the driver side based on pictures and measurements between the” top of the top” primary tubes, to the heat shielding on the frame itself – this makes me feel much more comfortable with Alessandro’s solution to my problem.)
So the question is; for a perfectly inserted set of primary tubes into the collector, will the collector impact my ground clearance? To answer this question I made a simple measurement illustrated by the following picture…
michael-william-albums-mike-s-photos-picture10625-collector-depth-proper-insertion-annotated.jpg
Looking at the picture above (forget about the camera parallax problem and trust me on the measurement) you see that if the primary tubes were perfectly inserted to the bottom of the female flange of the collector, the depth of the header assembly will be roughly 2 ¼ inches – thus “impacting” my vehicle ground clearance by ½ inch or so.
OK, for a perfect installation I end up losing ½ inch of ground clearance. But what if the collector installation were not perfect, how much vehicle ground clearance would I lose? The next picture illustrates the depth impact of the header assembly were the primary tubes just touch the collector. This is not a real-world case as not even a knucklehead would install the collectors with more care – but it does provide an upper limit to vehicle ground clearance impact. This is illustrated by the following picture…
As you can see from the picture above and comparison to the “perfect” tube insertion picture – we are talking about 1 inch max. Pictures on this thread look to me like worse case is “mid” primary tube insertion which translates to roughly ½ inch additional impact to vehicle ground clearance or a total impact of 1 inch vehicle ground clearance impact using my primary tube positions as a starting.
The next tolerance stackup that I looked at was the case where the collector was misaligned with the primary tubes. Here again, taking a practical approach, I was not able to get significant misalignment unless the primary tubes were less than halfway inserted into the collectors. For less than half insertions I could get up to ¾ inch of vehicle ground clearance impact. For more than halfway insertions the impact was ¼ to zero additional impact to vehicle ground clearance.
I have not yet looked into the vehicle ground clearance impact of motor mount or transmission mount issues. If anyone cares I will remove each and provide a maximum impact measurement for each and both… Off the top of my head, we are talking about ½ to 1 inch max…
Bottom line: Looking at M55555’s header position to unibody frame rail pictures I cannot tell what the impact is. It certainly looks like more than 1 inch. This suggests that either the collectors were installed with extreme incompetence, or we have other and possibly multiple issues at play.
Thoughts?
Mike
By the way, I have found that the use of a slide hammer greatly simplifies installation of the collector over the primary tubes – you can place force on each of the four sides of the assembly at the spring attach points. This tool is also the only good way to remove the collectors that I have found…
I don’t know if I am helpin or hurtin, but here goes (sorry about the length):
I took some time last night with an objective of coming up with a fitment tolerance stack up for the SS header installation. I limited my thinking to the primary tube set and collector as this pretty much sets the ground clearance for the installation unless you really screw up the connector pipes, cat, and muffler set. A list of issues which could impact ground clearance includes; primary tube set insertion depth into collector, angular alignment of primary tube set with the collector, motor mount height, and transmission mount height.
Note that I did not consider header component manufacture tolerance due to comments by Alessandro. However, given the jig-fixture method used by SS I would expect tolerances of ¼ inch or less in length and 1 to 2 degrees for bends. Under these assumptions the result would have negligible impacts on ground clearance. I looked quickly at thermal expansion, but in aggregate this represented length movements on the order of 1/8 inch or less over our operating temperature range.
This whole issue is vehicle ground clearance, however, I would like to take the discussion of suspension heights out of the picture by referencing all of my discussion to the unibody frame member. For a simple reference my car is at or near the “stock” ride height which gives me a “unibody to ground” clearance of roughly 5 ¾ inches as illustrated by the following picture…
All my further measurements are referenced to the unibody frame bottom to make measurements more transferable. A starting measurement becomes the distance between the bottom set of primary pipes to the bottom of the unibody frame. The addition of a collector to the primary tubes will “add” to this. For my header installation the distance between the bottom of the unibody frame and the lowest extent of the primary tubes is 1 ¾ inches as illustrated by the following picture…
From the picture above it is clear that if the collector, when attached to the primary tubes, adds more than 1 ¾ inches in depth to the header assembly – we will begin to impact vehicle ground clearance. (By the way, this measurement was the same on my passenger side primary tubes, which was a surprise to me. I thought that the passenger side header was lower than the driver side based on pictures and measurements between the” top of the top” primary tubes, to the heat shielding on the frame itself – this makes me feel much more comfortable with Alessandro’s solution to my problem.)
So the question is; for a perfectly inserted set of primary tubes into the collector, will the collector impact my ground clearance? To answer this question I made a simple measurement illustrated by the following picture…
Looking at the picture above (forget about the camera parallax problem and trust me on the measurement) you see that if the primary tubes were perfectly inserted to the bottom of the female flange of the collector, the depth of the header assembly will be roughly 2 ¼ inches – thus “impacting” my vehicle ground clearance by ½ inch or so.
OK, for a perfect installation I end up losing ½ inch of ground clearance. But what if the collector installation were not perfect, how much vehicle ground clearance would I lose? The next picture illustrates the depth impact of the header assembly were the primary tubes just touch the collector. This is not a real-world case as not even a knucklehead would install the collectors with more care – but it does provide an upper limit to vehicle ground clearance impact. This is illustrated by the following picture…
As you can see from the picture above and comparison to the “perfect” tube insertion picture – we are talking about 1 inch max. Pictures on this thread look to me like worse case is “mid” primary tube insertion which translates to roughly ½ inch additional impact to vehicle ground clearance or a total impact of 1 inch vehicle ground clearance impact using my primary tube positions as a starting.
The next tolerance stackup that I looked at was the case where the collector was misaligned with the primary tubes. Here again, taking a practical approach, I was not able to get significant misalignment unless the primary tubes were less than halfway inserted into the collectors. For less than half insertions I could get up to ¾ inch of vehicle ground clearance impact. For more than halfway insertions the impact was ¼ to zero additional impact to vehicle ground clearance.
I have not yet looked into the vehicle ground clearance impact of motor mount or transmission mount issues. If anyone cares I will remove each and provide a maximum impact measurement for each and both… Off the top of my head, we are talking about ½ to 1 inch max…
Bottom line: Looking at M55555’s header position to unibody frame rail pictures I cannot tell what the impact is. It certainly looks like more than 1 inch. This suggests that either the collectors were installed with extreme incompetence, or we have other and possibly multiple issues at play.
Thoughts?
Mike
By the way, I have found that the use of a slide hammer greatly simplifies installation of the collector over the primary tubes – you can place force on each of the four sides of the assembly at the spring attach points. This tool is also the only good way to remove the collectors that I have found…
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