I was just wondering, if people think it is worth the extra money it to buy Stainless Steel Heat Exchangers. Do they continue to look good over time? What about mufflers? Do the Bursch mufflers stay nice looking? I remember the paint burned off my Monza style exhaust pretty quickly.

The SSIs look nice, they are stainless, so no rusting. Bursch's paint tends to burn off from what I have read here. My triad still looks pretty good, but I think a little Jet Hot is good.

I always thought my Triad muffler would look good in a Jet Hot Sterling finish. Then polish up my stainless heat exchangers and have some shine to match the chrome bumpers ;-)

The stainless heat exchangers are the way to go...if you want heat. Nothing like having some rust on the stock ones and end up seeing double when the exhaust gasses seap into the cabin, haha. BTW the Bursch mufflers do burn their paint off fast...but nothing a little high temp paint from POR or eastwood can't fix.

I have a set of 2.0s that I'll sell.... They were used for 3 months, then I installed a Tangerine and 100 extra HP.

Mine look as good as they did when they were new.

The factory heat exchangers have a much better exhaust flange then the stainless counterparts. You'll never find a factory heat exchanger with a broken mounting tab. With the factory h/e's the surface that seals against the copper gasket is about twice as thick as any of the stainless ones. The stainless ones have the round pipe crushed oval and then dressed flat, the sealing surface is only as thick as the tubing.

Yes the stainless h/e's won't rust out. The exhaust pipes on all Porsche heat exchangers, since around 1965, is also stainless. A low grade of stainless that is. The actual heater boxes though are mild steel. The exhaust tubes last a very long time. FYI, in Europe they sell new heater boxes to "re-shell" heat exchangers.

My personal preference is to get a cherry set of factory h/e's and have them Jet-Hot coated. It's probably not the cheapest way to go though.

PK

the stainless exchangers are also considerably lighter than the stock ones.

yupp. and guess what, they don't rust like your monza either!

they clean up very nice, every time.
plus, they heat up faster and produce more heat.
oh, and no more exhaust gases in the cabin either.

Andy

Jake, how much were you going to let those HEs go for?

BTW: I just watched your video for the first time. Thanks again!

These babies are like new... 200 bucks. They just had 3 months of run time on them.

Jake,

If Matt doesn't want them, I will give you $200 for them.

Over 40,000 pairs of 914 SSI's sold from 1977 to 2003. They cant be all that bad. Only the first 1000 or so pairs had steel muffler flanges. Everything after that had stainless.

The tabs break off because DUMBASS installers try and use TWO exhaust gaskets in the heads and overtighten them when performing the install. Seen it many a time.


B

IMO, it's not worth it if your stock HEs are in good condition.



It depends on how much your engine leaks. Stainless HEs can still get baked on oil all over them. I've seen sets so dirty that you wouldn't even know they were stainless until you cleaned them.

I guess at that point it's time to get out the brillo/SOS pads and start cleaning, hehe. Speaking of which, I need to do that to mine...road grime and track time. Great another project on the to-do list

Really? thats interesting but at what price.. unless the re-shells are (really)cheap the SSI product seems a better solution .

Go for it. I have to tighten my budget anyways... i figure a mallory is more important then heat exchangers.