What LT's To Get
 

Im new to the LS1 scene. Im purchasing a 00 SS with a 7psi procharger kit and a loudmouth. I want to get a set of long tubes for it and a ory with no cats. My questions are whats better Kooks, QTP, Hooker? Also should i use a 1 3/4 or 1 7/8 primary with the charger. Other then a flash i dont want to mess with the car much other the headers and y pipe. Lead me in the rite direction please. Thanks

Bang for the buck, coated Pacesetters, cheap, fit, and work, not much else to say
If you have the $$$ for stainless, kooks
I'd probably do the 1-7/8 with the FI, you want flow above all, so in this case bigger is better

QTP yields more power per dollar than kooks, plus they look a hell of a lot nicer than kooks. kooks are probably the ugliest header you could ever buy. not taking anything away from kooks, they're supposed to be great, but QTP's simply yield more performance per dollar. kooks, however, do have a stainless y pipe.

pacesetters are the best bang for your buck overall. the pacesetters are actually a better quality/design than the hookers for over a hunderd dollars more.

get pacesetters if you're on a budget, QTP for stainless and best performance (although i hear their y-pipe hangs low). kooks sells headers with the same scavenging effect QTP does to achieve max hp, but they're like $1200. if money is no problem, the $1200 kooks are the best header you could get probably.

i will be going the route of pacesetters when the time comes. best fit, good header, amazing price, and i live a good 30 miles from any beach so salty air is no issue. it rarely snows in south jersey anyway, and i go to college in the winter so my car will rarely see road salt unless it decides to snow over christmas.

if you live near the ocean or see frequent road salt due to lots of snow, stainless should be your only option. any non-stainless header will rust.

since you're new, you may also wanna consider stepped edelbrock's. they won't fly for me because i need a catted-y, but if you plan on an ORY setup, edelbrock makes a sweet ORY and their headers look AMAZING, far superior to pacesetters.

toss SLP's in the garbage unless you like stainless steel that magically rusts, coating that flakes off and the ability to scrape even the tiniest of speed bumps.

I like about 20 mins from the ocean. I want something coated or stainless. What is the cost of the qtp's? How are dynatech headers?

http://www.thunderracing.com/catalog...&vid=3&pcid=52

a lot. 800 bucks for headers alone. y pipe is extra. (remember, you can get pacesetters and an ORY for 500 bucks, or with cats for 700! i live 20-30 minutes from the ocean and will rarely ever go down there except for a few times in the summer, so stainless is NOT necessary. it's only necessary if you're there a whole lot. going to the beach 10 times in the summer will NOT affect your headers)

dynatech headers come as a complete kit. i wouldn't get it, too pricey. you can get a kooks/qtp setup for less and since so many more people run them, if you run into problems, you'll have a lot more people to help you.

All headers dyno within 5rwhp of each other. Get what you can afford.

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not necessarily. the QTP's with HVMC are the exception to that rule. you very well may see 10hp extra from the QTP's. is it worth it? depends. if you're set on stainless it is. to me, it's not but i don't require stainless.

Check out the Edelbrock race headers with slip on collector. They are 1 3/4 to 1 7/8 primaries with a 3.5" collector. They require a bit of fabrication though to fit them up, but they are really cheap. BTW the coating that they come with is really just a grey spray paint.

I like my pacesetters, $500 for LT's and ORY at Tx speed

agreed

This is not accurate. Headers are dependant on the rest of the setup, runner length, exhaust port volume and cylinder heads all play a role in it.

There is no one "magical" header that'll produce the most HP.

Also you are totally wrong with scavenging. On a supercharged setup the intake air is being forced into the combustion chamber at above atomospheric pressure. Therefore the 5th cycle in the combustion process (induced via scavenging) is eliminated.

FI cars have different requirements to n/a.

Several choices here.

1st off if you run a LM with an ORY you probably won't like the sound. I'd budget on buying a Magnaflow or Borla Muffler with a 3" core and have it welded inplace of the LM resonator. It won't affect the volume but with an ORY will sound better.

The Magnaflow muffler will be the cheaper option and flow well enough, check Ebay as there are some shops on there which sell Magnaflow items a lot cheaper than Magnaflow does.

You could stick with the LM as is, but you'd want CATS. With FI you'd really want 3" core Metal Matrix CATS. Random Technology and Magnaflow make them, but they are expensive.

An alternative option would be to go to duals. 2.5" will flow better then a 3" Y. If you plan on big HP then 3" duals would be the way to go, although you'd probably have to dump before the axle. TSP makes a nice kit, Rumbler X.

Lastly, as explained in my above post scavenging doesn't take place with a supercharger and as the primary purpose of a LT header is to scavenge you probably won't see any benefit over other alternatives.

Flow rate is going to be largly dictated by primary diameter, the lenght will not be a real concern. So for this reason a set of shorties or mids would probably work just as well as LT's. This may be a cheaper option as people are always selling shorties because on a n/a motor they don't do anytihng (essentially they don't scavenge) but with FI it's a different ball game.

So in theory a good set of shorties should see similar/same gains as LT's on a supercharged car.

On a 03/4 Cobra shorties are generally worth ~25rwhp and LT's gain the same. The LS1 is no different in this respect.

But at the end of the day it's your money, so please go and research this rather than just taking my word on it. :)

EDIT: If you must go LT then Pacesetter & Edlebroack are great for cheap alternatives. And TQP or Stainless Works for expensive ones. Only difference is stainless steel for the expensive ones HP difference will be pretty much ZERO unless you match the header EXACTLY to your setup.

I have the Dynatech header system, currenty running with no cats, I used the Thunder racing off road pipes, so I can swap the cats in and out for emmision tests.
I had a few mods on my car, like the LSX intake manifold and corsa cat back exhaust. I did feel a performance gain when i swapped to these headers, I had to retune for fueling and i can see power coming in at a different place to before, seems to be more power up top.

The Dynatech are expensive, but I'm very happy with them. They fit very well, they dont hang too low, easy to fit once you got the car more than 15 inches off the ground.

I cant comment about other headers, as I never had them fitted, all i can say is that I'm happy with Dynatech.

QTP's or Kooks!