Header primaries rattling. Normal?

[ManBearPig]

I’ve never had proper longtube headers on a car before so I’m not sure if this is normal or not:

Just bolted up a set of Texas speed longtubes with off-road midpipes. Fitment and quality was beautiful. Zero clearance issues anywhere. I’ve put about 300 miles on the car and it runs strong. Picked up a significant gain in the midrange and I have been seeing 30* of spark at 7k RPM on 93 octane.

I put the car up today to do one last visual inspection and check as many fasteners as I could easily reach. I happened to notice that when i banged lightly on the exhaust with a mallet or closed fist, there is a pretty pronounced rattle...mostly coming from the passenger side header. I have double, triple, and quadruple checked that there is ample clearance between all parts of the exhaust and all parts of the car. No part of the exhaust is close anywhere. No ac bolt, no exhaust clamps...plenty of clearance.

I believe the header primaries are barely barely touching each other as they enter the collector and are buzzing when tapped on. I don’t hear this when the car is running and as of yet I don’t see that it is causing any false knock but I’m concerned it might.

Is this Normal for a longtube header?

Thanks

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[91gt331sc]

My mbrp long tubes did the exact same thing. It was only on passenger side as well. I had about 8,000 miles on them with no issue.

 

[thelostotter]

My ARH headers did this to a very minor degree. No issues with rattling while running or false knock. If you don’t have a false knock issue then there is no problem.

 

[ManBearPig]

I got back under the car today to take a closer look. I was able to stick the tip of a screwdriver in between the primaries in several places and it completely stopped the rattle. I tried to leverage them apart ever so slightly but didn’t want to risk breaking the tip of the screwdriver off in there. The tubes probably heat up enough when the car is up to temp that they are in full contact and don’t rattle. Either way, glad to hear it’s a somewhat acceptable occurrence and I won’t worry about it unless it somehow gets worse and the car starts pulling timino. Thanks for the insight.

 

[kluke15]

couple of mine we close too, wedged a washer up between them seems to have worked for about a year so far

 

[Anthony 05 GT]

I did the washer wedge method on my '05 years ago. One tube was too close to the bell housing and I've kept the washer in there ever since.

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