Off With Its Head(ers)!

31 Jan Off With Its Head(ers)!

Monday morning for many is a slow start, eventually crawling towards some degree of productivity. Not us. We hit the ground running.

The Z4M continues its march towards greatness, as Keller’s been hard at work installing a various number of parts. Today, we just finished up installing the headers.

In replacing the stock headers, several things are being achieved. To start off, stock headers are almost always a point of restriction in the exhaust system. That restriction will cause an awkward and stunted flow of exhaust gases, creating a bottleneck that the engine must waste power in order to push through. With the addition of these Supersprint headers, the flow of the exhaust should be greatly increased, freeing up some horsepower that can be best utilized in tearing up tires and asphalt. If you’ll notice in the comparison picture below, the Supersprint headers also remove another point of restriction in the exhaust – the primary catalytic converters.* In order to prevent a check engine light from the oxygen sensors, spacers were fitted between the headers and the sensors, and that gap “tricks” the sensors into believing that catalytic coverters are still installed, preventing any sort of annoying yellow dash light from being a constant bother.

There’s another major difference you may notice between the stock headers and the Supersprint set, and that would be the ceramic coating. The Supersprint headers come with Swain Tech’s thermal barrier, to keep the heat where it is supposed to be, preventing major heat soak from affecting the rest of the engine bay. Combined with the qualities of the header itself, this combination offers some great benefits for anybody looking to add a new bolt-on under the hood.

The pictures below are arranged chronologically. The stock headers installed on the Z4M, followed by the comparison photo, followed by the Supersprint headers installed. Keller’s working on the Z4M’s differential currently, so more news on this car should be arriving soon!

*As always, we are compelled to remind our readership that removal of the catalytic converters is for off-road and track use only. Check with the applicable local, state and federal laws regarding this.