Looking at . . .
 

. . . doing headers although im not sure what or who to go with :| i saw a website once and i cant find it where people posted their gains from mods . . . at the moment im looking at a set of pacesetter longtubes, but will i see/feel significant gains?

right now its stock manifolds w/ magnaflow catback on '97 lt1

any advice/recommendations would be sweet ! 8-)

You keeping AIR? Keeping the cats? you would need to get a cutsom y made with cats, or modify the pacesetter y to put cats in it. If you dont keep them, then it will all need to be tuned out. Which it would be smart to tune if you're putting headers on anyways.

if you do go with pacesetters. I suggest that you buy the uncoated ones and send them to www.jet-hot.com because pacesetters coating is absolute crap.

You would not need cats, just need to have the PCM tuned for no rear 02s, no EGR, and no AIR. That would also rely on you having a lax inspector or going to a private shop.

Not sure on whether pacesetters are bad in general, mine seem to be holding up just fine although I would bet that the Jet hot is a much better armor coating.

You will want to look into replacing the motor mounts, spark plugs and making/buying an over the valve cover wire set. Also need EGR block off plates if you plan on deleting that.

and of course non of here condone the removal of the emission componets, for that is bad for planet earth. Mmm..kay!

Well, go for a set of mids with a nice high flow cat. On a stock engine, I doubt there will be much of a power difference between LTs and mids.

Silly hippies... :)

hmm for now i was just gonna leave AIR/EGR an delete it later, unless that makes a difference down the road... probably grab a set of high flow cats and tune out the rear O2s

the whole motor was rebuilt about 1 1/2 ago (about 10k miles) so i think spark plugs and seals are all good ...

matt, did you buy the coated pacesetters or painted?

Coated, but I don't really put many miles on my car and its not a winter car.

Sounds like a good plan, you can weld in the cats in the pacesetter Y and they will fit. I gotta find the picture of the placement.

is it possible to apply a more durable paint over the pacesetter paint to last longer? idk if i want SS or black painted ...

and as far as cats are concerned, any in particular i should look at? they seem pretty expensive and i really dont want to pay more than i have to for cats

Well you basically have the choice of

a) Stainless
b) Pacesetter coated
c) jet hot coated pacesetters later on.

I would not bother with buying painted headers if you do not plan on having them coated immediately. I bought magnaflow 3" high flow cats a while back for 100 bucks a pop. Not bad, they were small too.

order directly through a carsound dealer and they are cheaper. I got mine for 79.00 each

ooh thanks yea they run around 81$ each which is not bad ...

is 100$ worth it for pacesetter's coating? and whats the difference between paint and their coating besides cost and appearence?

coating lasts longer then paint to prevent rust

a high temp paint such as VHT (rated at 1500*) wouldnt be the same?

ahh scratch that last idea, too much work to coat them (prepping/painting/curing)

probably invest in the coated headers

i would look into jet hot too. the pacesetter coating is crap. look at my mids in the forsale section. about 5k on them and not even 6 months and that **** happened!

you should really plan out your emissions now though, whether or not you want to be legal. seeing as you can buy them with or with out emissions fittings and plugging them down the road just looks silly. plus the **** is usually such a pain coming apart it ends up breaking so thats why most people !emissions :)

as for cats its almost not worth it since they aren't in factory location they technically don't pass.

if you want to stay legal and make better power than stock, you should do a set of mids like i have for sale. all the factory emissions fittings along with cat(s) in the stock location. State Legal Performance 8-)

no matter what you do, just tune it for what was done! replace the o2's while you are at it and don't forget extensions for the longtubes!

doing it right the first time is probably the best idea. That way you wont have to worry about them down the road. (no pun intended)

hmmmmmmmm mid lengths vs long tubes . . . power difference?

not really worried about what it looks if i !AIR !EGR as im not aiming for show

no i mean its silly to buy the ones with fittings then weld in bolts down the road.

there is a difference in power between the two. both are better than stock for sure.

- leanin towards pacesetter longtubes, they seem to be a bang for the buck !
- dont know about cats, if longtubes wont pass w/ cats then ill go private inspection . . .
- still dont know whether to !AIR !EGR no reason to or not to

Personally, with longtubes, I see no reason to keep either AIR or EGR. Maybe EGR, but its a hassle.

You don't get a sniff test, so the odds of you passing are high.

egr is no longer tested on pre obdII cars

yours, needs to be tuned out

pacesetters are bang for buck, but personally I will never go coated again. My pacesetters are ready to fall apart. Go stainless, LPP stainless headers have a great rep in the lsx community, not sure about lt1's, and they are reasonably priced.

Delete the air/egr. You will end up getting rid of them in the future, and doing it now will make the install much easier. You will throw a code for deleting the air/egr, but you can still drive the car with the codes without hurting anything. If you get rid of cats then you will need a tune or o2 sims to delete those codes.

Definitely do motor mounts at the same time and consider aftermarket header bolts.

AFAIK, LPP is still back ordered on LT1 cars.

well that sucks. I thought they were just sold out of ls headers

ebay has knock offs at a lower grade stainless