In the fall I am planning on getting headers and true duals for my '02 Z28. Since the town I will have the pipes made in only has about 120,000 people, I doubt that any shop (there are only 2 reputable ones that I know of) will do mandrel bending because of cost reasons. Will the performance trade off made with pressure bending be noticable at all? How will it change the sound?

 

why not just order a set of duals from Lane's or somewhere like that? As far as the difference goes, I guess you wouldn't lose too much if you went w/ a 3" dual setup that was crush bent.

 

yeah, my friend had 3" td's that were press bent, and only gained 3hp with the new madrel bent pipe. There would probably be a bigger difference had it have been 2 1/2" or smaller pipe though.
I now own his old 3" press bent td's, and the sound is great and made a big difference over my old crappy y-pipe setup.
p.s. The x-pipe is a Dr. Gas, not one of those cheapo x-pipes I've seen, so that may have a little to do with it

 

Press bends suppossedly decrease the inner diameter by about 20%, so if you run 3" pipes, they will neck down to less than a 2.5" pipe. No only that, but it will cause turbulence with the focal restriction. I would guess a 3" press bent setup would not flow as well as a mandrell bent 2.5" setup. A guy posted a while ago going from press bent TD's to mandrell bent and gained ALOT of power. I would wait and do it right the first time personally.

 

I would get a kit online but I'm using QTP headers and I have yet to see an X-pipe that will fit them without modifications. If there is one I would be very intersted in locating it.

 

QUOTE: I have yet to see an X-pipe that will fit them without modifications.


One word, modify.

 

Any shop should be able to order mandrel bends ahead of time. Stop in and tell them what you want. Have them look at the car and bust out the tape measure and angle gauges. Theyll call in their order and youll have your mandrel bends. Or you could always just order a bunch of U bends yourself and have them cut them up for the angles needed. Thats what I did when i fabbed up my exhaust.

 

What about the x-pipe? I'm not the most mechanically inclined person, so I would like to avoid any modification if at all possible.

 

You don't have to be mechanically inclined. You are going to have it welded right? If so, you can leave the mechanics of how it's gonna fit to the muffler guy.

 

Kinda makes me wonder what I should do with my new press bender....

 

I suppose so, I was concerned that if they weren't experienced in mandrel bending would they know how to design the X-pipe?

 

QUOTE: I suppose so, I was concerned that if they weren't experienced in mandrel bending would they know how to design the X-pipe?

Don't worry man, go for it. It won't be hard for them to do. A decent muffler shop can put together mandrel bends just as easily as press bends. It's just a LITTLE arithmetic and some welds, piece of cake.

 

just order a quality xpipe such as the dr. gas.

You could always purchase the TSP duals, and get a few U shaped bends just incase they needed to severly change something.

 

Thanks, I'll be getting in touch with them soon about how things are going to be done. Thanks again.

 

I had the same problem as you. No shops here have mandrel benders either. I ended up going with Lane's setup and couldn't be happier with the work. I was just in Meineke the other day with a friend who has an LT1 T/A for them to look at my setup on the lift. He bought one of those universal kits from Jegs and will have Meineke make it fit his Pacesetters. The guy was really impressed with my true duals, and he's had 3 4th gen f-bodies too so he knows them well.

Jason