Is this a real case senario or a make believe one? If it's a real problem i'd say bout 90% it's a lean condition. If it's make believe......i'll tell ya what...you can get glowing headers a number of ways.

 

The fairies in our header primaries are not make believe, they are very real, they get extremely agitated and cause glow when running in a lean condition.

On a sane note, I have only seen glowing header primaries from lean conditions, my car ran rich for quite sometime with no glow.

-Dustin-

 

On a normal car:

Lean condition
Pre-ignition
Restriction in the exhaust (clogged cat, etc.)

Rich condition doesn't count in my book, since it would have to be so rich that it was intended to be that way. If you're running that rich you'll be able to smell it allover the car plus you'll probably have a black cloud when you step on it...

 

unfortunatly the problem is REAL.

 

Who has coolant in the oil?

 

No one in particular, its jsut funny

 

Headers can glow red for other reasons like a clogged cat too

 

no cats

 

I like those people who say lean burning means hotter combustion chamber, which is why pistons melt when you run lean... However, as we all know, what drives an internal combustion engine is heat... which in turn gives you cylinder pressure moving the piston. Now, we all know that its better to be rich than lean for power numbers right? So that means higher combustion pressures, which means higher combustion temps right? So that means, rich is just as hot as lean. Its the speed that the burn burns at that makes lean bad. Lean burns at a slower rate that rich, rich burns faster so the allowed head to be soaked up by the engine is less... which is why a lean mixture burns the **** outta pistons and rings... Header glowing is either incomplete burn due to timing, or you gotta nice cam sittin in that block. There are other reasons as well.

 

That might be one reason people say rich b/c running rich will clog up your cat(s) and then clogging up your cat(s) will cause your headers/manifolds to glow.
-b

 

I'd say lean if it's a real situation. You could tell if it was very rich condition....gas smell and smoke, and wouldn't have less power.

How much glow are you talking, turbo glow or just a slight glow?

 

I had super hot glowing manifolds once. It wasn't an lt1 but it was on my 86 monte ss. I rebuilt a 350 .60 over. I wanted to break the cam in so I figured I could just put the stock quadra jet and computer controlled HEI and just break it in. Not quite sure why it happened but they were glowing red and smoke was coming into the car thru the dash . About 2 minutes into breaking it in it just died. It took my a few seconds but I tried tapping on the tank. It was empty. Put some more gas in and it fired right up. Idled good at about 2000rpm and it sorta sounded good cause the car had stupid glasspacks on it from the previous person. Next thing I know my buddies eyes grow real huge and thats when the smoke started coming in. I shut the car off(the temp gauge was starting to climb). I shut it off and it kept running. It had to be igniting in the manifold cause it ran for like 30 seconds, spitting and popping. To my horror there were my new msd wires just cooking. We tried to pull them off but we couldn't get our hands within 1 foot of the manifolds cause they were that hot!!! Iwas pissed then but now I just laugh about it.So my case was rich!

 

Either condition can cause the header to glow.

Most of the time it will be a lean condition that causes them glow, but under extremely rich conditions the headers can glow if excess fuel is burning in the exhaust system.