Just received my Pacesetter painted LTs from TSP, 3" Thunderbolt metallic cats from Ebay, and a 3" inlet, 4" outlet flowmaster merge from Jegs.

My goal is to build an affordable, free-flowing exhaust that maintains relatively good ground clearance and passes a visual inspection in NC. Since I don't have the budget for stainless headers, I opted for Pacesetter ($368 shipped with O2 sensors and gaskets). I also decided to save $80 and buy painted over coated since either will rust eventually. I added a few coats of VHT header paint to preserve them as long as possible. The cats cost $140 for both shipped and the flowmaster merge was ~$55. My plan is to a custom Y pipe made at an exhaust shop and leave the cat-back exhaust I have ( a flowmaster) until I have money to replace it.

Currently, the car is mostly stock with the exception of a mild cam that was installed before I got the car (don't know specs).

I spent a lot of time on here reading to try to pick the best option for me and thought this might be helpful to others.

 

Congrats on the new parts. Those headers will last awhile. I installed a set of those on a friends car about 4 years ago that were painted. They have rust on them now but they dont have any holes and they still serve their function as lt's.

 

Did you paint them with header paint or just leave the paint that came on them? I am curious how well the header paint works.

 

We just left the paint on them and it was completly burned off a month later.