Exhaust Headers
Design and manufacture of the exhaust manifold for the MA21RT and MA22RT combustion engine of the MART Formula Student team.
The engine of the car is from a Honda CBR 600 RR spec PC40. This is a naturally aspirated 4 cylinder engine. The engine originally features a 4-2-1 exhaust manifold configuration. This means that they are joined two to one in a first section, and again two to one in a second section ending in a single pipe at the end of the system. For this exhaust, a 4-1 configuration was chosen, since the operating speed design was designed around 10k rpm. In addition, this configuration allows for a more compact volume.
The material of choice is stainless steel 304. The tubes have a diameter of 38 x 1.5 mm for the first section and 52 x 1.5 mm for the second section. It was constructed from straight pipe sections and 90° bends. The bends had a bending radius of 62 mm and were cut to size to form the collectors.
For the 2022 season it was decided to built a new exhaust system, even though it was not giving any problems in its operation. These changes were made for the following reasons:
- Change of the engine position (5 cm forward on the X-axis).
- Improved temperatures in the interior area between the firewall and the engine (fuel and oil tank).
- Chassis change, new design of the rear area (supension, engine mounts, transmission, etc).
- New lighter muffler.
A few photos from the manufacturing process during the 2021 season:
2022 Photos: