Exhaust Scavenging
When an engine starts its exhaust stroke, the piston moves up the cylinder bore, decreasing the total chamber volume. With the exhaust valve open, the high pressure exhaust gas escapes into the exhaust manifold or header, creating an exhaust pulse comprising three main parts: The high-pressure head is created by the large pressure difference between the exhaust in the combustion chamber and the atmospheric pressure outside of the exhaust system. As the exhaust gases equalize between the combustion chamber and the atmosphere, the difference in pressure decreases and the exhaust velocity decreases. This forms the medium-pressure body component of the exhaust pulse. The remaining exhaust gas forms the low-pressure tail component. This tail component may initially match ambient atmospheric pressure, but the momentum of the high- and medium- pressure components reduces the pressure in the combustion chamber to a lower-than-atmospheric level. This relatively low pressure helps to extract all the spent fuel from the cylinder and induct the intake charge during the overlap period when both intake and exhaust valves are partially open. The effect is known as scavenging. Length, cross-sectional area, and shaping of the exhaust ports and pipeworks influences the degree of scavenging effect, and the engine speed range over which scavenging occurs.

The magnitude of the exhaust scavenging effect is a direct function of the velocity of the high and medium pressure components of the exhaust pulse. Performance headers work to increase the exhaust velocity as much as possible. One technique is tuned-length primary tubes. This technique attempts to time the occurrence of each exhaust pulse, to occur one after the other in succession while still in the exhaust system. The lower pressure tail of an exhaust pulse then serves to create a greater pressure difference between the high pressure head of the next exhaust pulse, thus increasing the velocity of that exhaust pulse. In V6 and V8 engines where there is more than one exhaust bank, Y-pipes and X-pipes work on the same principle of using the low pressure component of an exhaust pulse to increase the velocity of the next exhaust pulse.

Great care must be used when selecting the length and diameter of the primary tubes. Tubes that are too large will cause the exhaust gas to expand and slow down, decreasing the scavenging effect. Tubes that are too small will create backpressure against which the engine must work to expel the exhaust gas from the chamber, reducing power and leaving exhaust in the chamber to dilute the incoming intake charge. Since engines produce more exhaust gas at higher speeds, the header(s) are tuned to a particular engine speed range according to the intended application. Typically, large primary tubes offer the best gains in power and torque at higher engine speeds, while smaller tubes offer the best gains at lower speeds.

Many headers are also resonance tuned, to utilize the low-pressure reflected wave rarefaction pulse which can help scavenging the combustion chamber during valve overlap. This pulse is created in all exhaust systems each time a change in density occurs, such as when exhaust merges into the collector. For clarification, the rarefaction pulse is the technical term for the same process that was described above in the "head, body, tail" description. By tuning the length of the primary tubes, usually by means of resonance tuning, the rarefaction pulse can be timed to coincide with the exact moment valve overlap occurs.