Sadly I live in Southern California so I have to be able to pass emissions with the visual and all that bull****. So, I'm thinking about some shorty headers obviously. I'd like to know the hp difference between shorty's and longtubes. I mean, I know the longtubes are going to make a ton more but the shorty's will still make pretty good power right? Just not in all of the places where the longtubes make power? Anyway, what are some good shorty's? I know JBA is really respected but their headers are more expensive than longtubes so I'm not wasting money on them. Any other good shorty's for $300-$400-ish? What about FRPP shorty's? Idk how much they are though. And I've also heard of osme header called FMS or something like that and they are supposed to be pretty good and cheap. Thanks for the help.
FRPP shorties are good & they are stainless steel. There was as article on MM&FF last year on a 5.0 L motor testing shorties, equal length shorties & long tubes. The difference between them was only around 10hp difference. The long tubes did have more low end torque and around 15 more tq than the shorties. The difference between the equal & un-equal was less than 5 hp, not worth the hassle for the equal lenght shorties. If you have a 5.0 shorties will not help a lot, as the 5.0 already has small diameter shorty headers, which promote torque. Larger aftermarket headers will benifit more on a larger motor or power adder.
Sorry, I have a 1996 Cobra with no mods yet except magnaflow cat-back. Will be doing gears and such soon but want to plan everything out first.
Headers would be alotta work for minimal gain. The real problem is the cats and you can't touch those in Cali.
if you wanna risk it, get the JBA midlength headers. they have good gains. if you are stuck on shorties, get the JBA's because they are worth the money. most problems people have seem to come from improper installation. personally I'm leaning towards the midlength's with the catted H pipe. I hope I don't get pulled over.
