[Urbex]

Knowing Australia is a RHD country, I'm not expecting anyone here to have experience with this, but then I know I've seen some other people on here not from Australia, so I figured it's at least worth a shot to ask.

I'm seriously considering having a set of the Wildcat headers sent over here to the USA for my 2002 Grand Vitara build, as there isn't anything available that I've found here in the States for these Zuks, and anyone willing to custom fab a set for me here would want nearly 3 times as much as what it would cost to just have these sent to me - https://bestmufflers.com/bshop/index.ph ... er=product

Really, after adjusting for the dollar conversion, even after what I think it would cost to ship them here, the price really isn't bad at all. Right in line with what I would spend on a decent set of headers for one of my Chevy V8 projects. Problem for me though is that I don't know if these things are going to work in the LHD cars that we have here, and the price is just a bit more than I would want to gamble on a try it and see.

So I'm asking here if anyone has any prior experience with this?

[Joe]

No idea if they will work on a LHD car but took a few pics for ya

[Urbex]

Thanks much! My biggest concern is clearing the steering shaft, as that will be the hardest part to move. I'm assuming the body and frame structures are more or less the same on both the LHD and RHD cars, with the obvious exception of the firewall. So that I likely won't run into interference issues with the frame, inner fenders, suspension, transmission, etc.

Any chance you can get a measurement of how far out the tubes are from the flange? Looking for dimension A from this picture -

Attachment:

exhaust_headers_dimensions.gif

[Joe]

I'm away for work till the 21st I'll try grab some then

[Urbex]

No particular rush...I haven't even started tear down on that project Vitara yet.

[Gwagensteve]

Have you looked into the European market? Suzuki's seem pretty well supported in Europe and other than the UK they're all LHD.

[Gwagensteve]

I believe wildcat is the lower priced brand of Genie, which are a fairly big player in the local market. I'd consider contacting Genie to see if the wildcat product is exported to a LHD market. (or is sourced from a LHD market - it wouldn't surprise me if they're sourced from overseas whilst Genie are made locally)

[Urbex]

Gwagensteve wrote:

Have you looked into the European market? Suzuki's seem pretty well supported in Europe and other than the UK they're all LHD.

Until I found these things, I didn't think there was anything out there period for headers/extractors for these Suzukis. I thought it was all pretty much contained to the 4 cylinders found in things like the Aerio. While I haven't done a deep dive to the darkest corners of the internet, from the several times I did start to get into looking around for stuff, I didn't find a thing outside of some suspension lift stuff and the so called universal stuff that fits absolutely nothing but claims to fit everything under the sun. So I didn't put a whole lot of effort into finding what I didn't think existed.

That's why I'm looking at spending the money on importing these things.

[Gwagensteve]

Joe, maybe if you bolted the two header flanges together that would highlight any differences left to right and as the RH header clears the steering in our application, if the headers are pretty much symmetrical, the LHS stands a good chance of clearing the LHD steering shaft too.

[Urbex]

Gwagensteve wrote:

Joe, maybe if you bolted the two header flanges together that would highlight any differences left to right and as the RH header clears the steering in our application, if the headers are pretty much symmetrical, the LHS stands a good chance of clearing the LHD steering shaft too.

Oooh, good point! Sometimes I miss the most obvious of things, lol.

He pretty much did that in one of the photos -

At least based on that image, they do look pretty darn close. I'm not even all that concerned if I may have to put a small dent in a primary tube or two to clear things, I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be a situation of the steering shaft passing right down the middle of the collector or a similar situation that would be difficult to fix without completely redesigning the things.

[Gwagensteve]

Agreed, and I'd missed that. They look pretty symmetrical, or, if anything, the LHS looks slightly closer in.

[Joe]

They are slightly different, the far left pipe in the reposted pic sits slightly higher in relation to the position to the flange, if the two were bolted together it'd be easier to see.
I fly home tomorrow ill grab some measurements in the next few days.

[Joe]

Ok got some measurements for ya on the left header
A is 140mm
B is 320mm
C is 450mm
Not sure what the equation is in US measurements