What should I do. I either want to get shorty headers and take off or leave my stock cat's or get longtubes. It's either going to be jba shorties, or mac longtubes. I don't want it to be too loud and don't want trumpets. Also if I go the jba route I can stay legal in cali. I'm kinda of leaning toward's the jba with stock cat's, but I know how awesome those LT's would sound. How bad will it trumpet with the LT's. Thank's

 

I don't think there is a significat difference in capped long tubes or shorties. Most of the sound effect is in the mufflers, maybe a little bit in the headers as it does effect exhaust flow.

I just ordered the JBA equal length SS shorties from Stillen. Negotiated a good price. There have been a few other postings on these headers and the owners seem quite pleased.

 

I keep hearing that the short headers are not giving anybody any real power gains. Is this true?

I really like the equal length JBA shorties too, and I would think that they would well out-perform the FRPP shorty, since their tubes are considerably longer and equal-length. I also want to keep my cats and keep the installation simple. Has anyone on here seen appreciable dyno gains with the JBA's? I can understand why you wouldn't see much of anything with the FRPP headers. Anyone?

 

When you guy's say equal do you mean the shorties

 

short headers work better in the high rpm range and the long tube work in the lower rpm range. I would go with long tube.

 

Equal in this context means each runner from the flange to the collector is the same length. From a technical point of view this means all the exhaust pulses are nearly equally separated ... except on a typical V8 you really need to cross over from side to side to get them exactly the same. A very interesting sound. It is desirable for the pulses not to arrive at the collector at the same time so as to promote scavaging. JBA seems to have the only equal length shortie on the market as near as I can tell. All the others are 'almost'.

 

There is another post here where the owner (rrobello) indicates a 10 HP gain based on two independent dyno runs (w/o a retun yet). His car was also a doner to JBA to create these headers.

When I talked to BBK about thier shorties (not quite equal length) they indicated insignificant gain over the stock header. But they looked really cool.

Header design is a combination of art and science. There isn't one that works well across the whole RPM range. Each design or configuration is going to tend to benefit the engine in a specific RPM band. Between designs that band will move up or down, and even shrink or grow.

The only way to tell for sure what the power gain is, a controlled dyno run is needed and several headers to try on a test mule. Different cars will yield different results because depending on engine manufacturing tolerance stack up, etc, some just flat out run better than others. Even when you run your own car on a dyno before and after, unless the data is corrected to a standard day, the results are not necessarily comparable or conclusive.

Anyway, don't expect 50 HP.

 

If you don't mind, how much did you get them for.

 

Check your mail.

We used to live in Corona ...

 

I have seen the power graphs from JBA's website and they look good, but the power graphs that MM&FF showed in their header comparision early this year didin't agree at all. The JBA website shows 20hp gain....go figure...but the MM&FF article seemed to indicate the peak gain at about 5 hp.
I would think the JBA headers would sound much better than any of the other shorties since they are equal length, but they also are probably the most labor intensive to install.

 

Well I think that is why most are not equal length, they will compromise balanced length for ease of installation. The equal length combination tends to be bulkier whether its a short or long tube design.

 

nothing in mail

That's awesome, I live like 40 min from corona!

 

We moved in 93 due to a corporate move.

Okay. back to your original question, I asked Stillen if they could beat RPM Outlet and they made me a competetive offer including shipping. Note, RPM outlet price is now higher than it was originally reported about 10 days ago ... beleive it was a typo.

 

plus RPM outlet tacks on hidden costs when you buy.... and they suck as a reseller. I wouldnt buy anything from them if you had me at gun point.

 

The only down side to LT's in clearance issues on some of them. I am very happy with my SLP's running with flows. If you are looking for show and not much go......and to say you have headers, go with shorties. Less hassel and much cheaper.

As for the sound...Lt's are the sound of back in the day. It has the rumble, even with my catted x pipe. All my O2's are hooked up and if I can get to drive is more, it will pass the data log portion of our emissions.