row headers - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

hey - anyone ever put row headers on a north american car? specifically, on the 3.2S aus and uk boxsters there are no cats on the headers, while on north american cars there are (and i think euro cars). look at this ebay listing (and note the part # on the header): http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320408728636&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT looks like porsche would rather delete the cats on the headers than on the midpipes. i'd read that there is no power difference between the two iterations, but perhaps a weight savings?

My understanding is that there's a difference in OBD emissions requirements between European spec Porsches and North American ones .

I have a nice set of Australian spec headers for sale if your interested. They are of course, in Australia though so keep in mind postage rates... Sam

Just because someone says a part fits a Boxster it may not. In my experience if a part fits a Boxster & nothing else the part# starts with 986. If the part# starts with 996 it was used on 996's & may fit Boxsters since these cars were developed jointly to share parts to save costs. 996 exhaust manifolds don't fit Boxsters. I think any Boxster not required to have warmup cats for emissions laws (ROW) uses the 97-99 USA exhaust but I would have to check part#s to verify that.

the reason i noted the part number is, if you go to the USA PET, it is for a 2.7/3.2 L boxster w/ cats (the 2.5 L has a different part number). any USA exhaust made 97 to 99 would not have cats but be for a 2.5 L. so, the assumption is that porsche used the same part # for headers with and w/o cats, and just issued the appropriate part by region. knowing for a fact the uk and aus 2.7/3.2 L boxsters do not have cats on the headers (these are preheat cats required to meet USA emmissions) one can assume porsche felt the best performance was achieved by locating the remaining cat on the mid pipes. so, if one were looking for the best performance mod, it would be to use catless headers and not catless midpipes (and complete catlessness appears to kill low rpm torque). there are those cheap ebay headers out there, but welds, steel quality and flanges have been questioned, and the size of the primaries is a bit large, resulting in decreased low rpm performance. as an option to $2000 headers, i was thinking of row headers instead.

I agree with your assessment that Porsche, as well as a good many high end tuners, believe that the best performance is achieved by utilizing individual headers in conjunction with cats that are located further down stream . This allows for greater freedom with respect to designing the length of primaries, using different diameter piping, incorporating a real merge collector ect .... And this was an approached that I greatly considered as my final choice for an exhaust system. However, during the process, I discovered that it was extremely difficult to find high quality low cell cats that were designed in such a way that they were compatible with the overall system . And, for some reason the ones that I did discover were either the wrong cell count or unjust in their cost . And, at 400 cells (and I've heard from some sources that they're as high 600 cell), I completely dismissed any idea of retaining the oem secondary cats. They're arguably the most restrictive part of the oem system .