Fifty years ago, George Kryssing Sr. (Papa Kook) started Kooks Custom Headers on Long Island in New York. Today, the company is still family-owned and operated, but resides in the heart of racing country, Statesville, North Carolina. The Kooks staff is now led by George Kryssing, Jr., and maintains the same commitment to quality and performance that’s made the family’s business so successful over the last five decades.

Kooks manufactures custom headers, mid-pipes, and exhaust systems  to fit the vast majority of today’s late-model performance vehicles along with race headers to fit a wide variety of engine, cylinder head, transmission, and chassis configurations. Their recent move to NASCAR’s backyard has opened up many new opportunities for the company, and their constant adaptation of new technologies has kept them at the forefront of the industry in custom exhaust products.

Check out this cool shop tour video from the Kooks facility in North Carolina.

For example, they can also create a set of custom headers on-site, on your vehicle, using the same Baces 3D ScanFlex computerized measuring machine they use to determine tubing placement for their street-car headers. The machine is an invaluable tool for the Kooks Research and Development team and allows them to engineer headers that fit well, sound great, and most of all, improve performance.

Reducing waste and improving quality are two of the chief benefits that adopting the latest technology has brought to the company, as they can virtually build the entire product in their CAD programming software without ever having to bend a tube or burn any welding wire, then craft the prototype set once they are happy with the virtual version. Innovation such as this is just one of the ways that Kooks Custom headers works to stay ahead of the competition, and we’re happy to have them as part of the team here at Dragzine.