which headers are better, shorties or longtubes? i have hedman shorties on it right now and they blow. should i get another brand of shorties or upgrade to longtubes?
85_SS_302_Coupe said:I'd say LT's but on a bone stock or mostly stock engine you won't see much gains over aftermarket shortys....also keep in mind that long tubes will drag and scrape everything if your car is too low, whereas shorties can be tucked up a couple inches higher along with the mid pipe. Also, in the event of hitting a pothole or something bad, you'll likely ruin a set of full lengths, which cost more to replace than a mid pipe with shorties.....i'm not trying to sway you away from LTs, just giving some tips that might not get passed on from anyone else. Another thing you don't hear much of is that LTs will actually quiet your car down a tad vs. shorties.
on the average car where LT make 2 or 3 more hp then the shorty headered car i doubt you will hear all that much louder exhaust. maybe different tone but 2 or 3 hp can't raise it any amount of db's.Redrooster said:Everything in you post was right on and gave a good point up until you said longtubes would quiet the car down. Where did you hear that? The longtubes will certainly not quiet down your car. If anything it will make it louder. HP=Noise. You make more power you move more air through the motor the louder the car is. Plain and simple. Add h/c/i to you current exhaust set up and see if the car isn't much louder. Why... because you are moving much more air/ making more power. Same thing with the longtubes. Make more power/ make more noise.
Redrooster said:Everything in you post was right on and gave a good point up until you said longtubes would quiet the car down. Where did you hear that? The longtubes will certainly not quiet down your car. If anything it will make it louder. HP=Noise. You make more power you move more air through the motor the louder the car is. Plain and simple. Add h/c/i to you current exhaust set up and see if the car isn't much louder. Why... because you are moving much more air/ making more power. Same thing with the longtubes. Make more power/ make more noise.
85_SS_302_Coupe said:Have you ever ran LTs on your car? I know because it did it on MY car, so i'm not talking out my ass. To a point, loud is loud and you won't even notice the difference...like now, i'm running dumped 1 chambers and it's loud as hell so there's not much difference, but back when i ran full exhaust it was WAY quieter than any of my friends who ran the same exhaust with the same mufflers (being in a car club with over 1k members, you get pretty big cruise in and lots of cars to compare, so again, i'm not talking out my ass).
Adding H/C/I is in no way compariable to adding an full length headers vs. shorties. That's like saying Edelbrock heads made my car louder than AFR heads. The reason LT's make the car quieter is because they equal out the exhaust pulses, which smooths out the flow of the exhaust, making for a smoother sound which equals a quieter sound. We're not talking drastic changes here, but it is there.
Flavadave4 said:I have MAC shorties and i absolutly hate them, they were a pain in the butt to install and constantly have to tighten them up.
Redrooster said:I've been working on Mustangs for about 15 years and owned about ten. So I'm not talking out of my ass either. My current combo has longtubes on it. There was a noticable difference between the longtubes and the factory shorties. The longtubes are much louder. According to your reasoning the longtubes will be quieter because they equal out the flow. So by that an equal length shorty must be quieter than a unequal huh?
I agree the longtubes will change the tone of the exhaust. I understand that the H/C/I combo is a diffferent senario, but it has the same principal. I was trying to make a point that more power means more noise. To say they will be quieter just doesn't make sense.
Flavadave4 said:I have MAC shorties and i absolutly hate them, they were a pain in the butt to install and constantly have to tighten them up.
They do sound great with off road H and some flows.
I just installed some BBK long tubes on a freinds car....alot easier and i like the single flange contruction alot better.....car sounds sick with a x pipe and flows
I would go with LT's if you can spare the extra dough
85_SS_302_Coupe said:Do yourself a favor and get allen head bolts for them if you can't afford/won't bother with locking bolts. This way, at least when you have to tighten them you can get a good crank on'em with the allen key without worrying about stripping the bolts.