A NOT so wise man once told me; "One of the best forms of flattery is to have another company copy your design.".

Our TRI-Y headers have been copied and I thought I would share some details with our customers. Here is a side by side comparison of OUR TRI-Y headers built by us and OUR TRI-Y headers built by the other place.

We have all of OUR headers CHROMEX ceramic coated where as the other place just has them chrome dipped for $15.00 per set. As indicated on the face of the flange, the copies were built in "10/05". Obviously installed, removed, shipped to a second owner and then shipped to us to be fixed and CHROMEX ceramic coated. In that short period of time look at how well the chrome dip held up.

Here's a comparison of the attention to detail we build into every header and the lack of detail built into the other headers.

 Ours               Theirs

Notice the gaps around the primary tubes and the short welds on the copies? This means incomplete port shaping and more areas for moisture to settle in. Water and mild steel don't mix well.

These are pictures of the fixtures we use to build OUR TRI-Y headers in.

Here's a couple pictures of the copied headers, built by the other shop, fitting OUR fixtures perfectly.

As you can clearly see, the competitors headers are not simply similar in design, they are exact copies of OUR headers.

But, there are some differences. The drivers side collector is actually too short. The passenger side header flange does not allow proper clearance for the stock, short, alternator bracket. The O2 sensor bungs were not installed at all. These details would leave the customer with installation problems. The header builder who copied OUR headers did not do a very good job.

Here's a picture of the copies showing the part # "195Y" and the date "10/05" etched into the face of each flange. It's hard to make out from the picture.

In a nutshell, Clear Image Automotive knows the 94 - 96 B-body inside and out. We know that minor details like O2 sensor bungs and incorrect clearance at the flange is the difference between a happy customer and a not so happy customer. We go the extra mile to fully shape each primary tube to the full D-shape of the flange and we do near 100% welds around each primary tube to help prevent areas for corrosion to start. The competitor sells OUR TRI-Y headers cheaper, but as the old saying goes, "You get what you pay for!".

Stainless steel headers:

Here are the 304 stainless headers our competitor is building:

Take a close look at the collectors and you can see the wrinkles in the side wall of the primary collectors. Also notice the bulkiness of the final collectors. This is a result of forming the collectors with tooling designed for steel. Stainless is much harder to form and does not want to stretch as easily as steel.

We will have a finished set of our 3-4 stainless TRI-Y headers next week. For now please take a look at our 304 stainless final collector:

It is easy to see the difference in quality. Our 304 stainless collectors are formed using tooling specifically designed for stainless on a machine specifically designed to form stainless collectors.