hey i need a little help i have a 98 z28 and i was wanting to know what would give me more power and good sound mostly what will sound best..an X pipe or Y pipe?? help please~!

 

The X is proven to give you more power but you won't notice the difference or anything. The true duals are going to sound deeper depending on your selection of duals, it will be louder too unless you get a cutout with your y.

 

Wrong!

Wrong!

Not 100% accurate

Wrong!

 

Depends what you want. There is no simple answer to this.

The easiest answer is ALL the setups can work and work well. It just depends what you want and how much $$$ you are prepared to spend.

While a new exhaust will help in the HP department it won't transform the car unless you go for LT headers and suitable mid pipe.

Off the shelf catbacks are great, because they are cost affective and simply bolt on without any fabbing. You can also bolt one direct to the stock midpipe and headers yet it will be fine when you upgrade to LT's.

Y pipes can make really good HP as well. They have a high velocity rate which is good for under the curve performance. Plus a good Y merge collector will scavenge in much the same way as an X pipe. The limitation comes from the diameter of the tubing. Most Y pipe setups & catbacks are 3". This is fine for most applications, but if you plan on 500rwhp it will be a restriction. Having said that though, there are many people who have successfully made over 600rwhp+ using a regular catback.

As for sound, yes it is generally accepted that duals sound better, but this is subjective and a good Y setup still sounds kick ***. Put it this way you would need to have a very good ear indeed to be able to tell if an exhaust was a Y pipe or not.

H pipes, these are the favoured old school setup. Generally a H will offer better under the curve performance than a X pipe but this is a very scetchy area. Sound wise the H will sound deeper and more old school muscle, where as X pipes tend to go a little racey and exotic sounding.

The downside to duals are price, availability and location.

First off there are very few off the shelf kits. And most dump before the rear axle. This means it will be noisey espcially in the cabin. You could have them exteneded or have a custom set made that go out the back, these can be made more silent than stock if you wanted. However this does increase the price.

Also there's a distinct lack of space under an Fbody. So while 2.52 duals are quite doable, 3" over the axle is not easy at all. Also duals can get in the way if you ever plan on running a body mounted torque arm.

Also if you don't plan on Lt's yet most duals will require some form of custom work to fit stock headers. You'll then more custom work when you upgrade to Lt's.

So all in all it's a personal choice with no one single answer.

www.ls1sounds.com will give you an idea what different setups sound like.

Personally for sound and for serious FI applications I'd go duals with a H pipe.

But for convience and price on a bolt on/cammed Ls1 it's hard to dismiss a regular catback. Just as long as its a good catback (stay away from the American Thunder Flowmaster catback, it doesn't flow great for modyfied vehicles).