Repair-It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5fM95mwFU

Mods: longtubes, no cats, some kind of intake and a tune. I estimate it gained 50-60rwhp.

I wonder if someday I will revisit my hatred of longtubes.

kevm14 wrote:I wonder if someday I will revisit my hatred of longtubes.

Why do you hate them so much? Fitment issues? Complexity?

Basic fitment, reliability, and underhood heat. Cast iron manifolds do all of that better. I've also noticed that thin wall headers sound bad. Obviously if the car is loud enough that doesn't matter.

Fitment: installation hassle, flange thickness (can lead to gasket headaches). Then you have to do something with the cats as they no longer bolt up obviously.

Reliability: It's not so much the header itself but that the reliability of the car seems to be negatively effected in some cases (see Fitment or Underhood heat)

Underhood heat: Particularly in a small engine bay like my CTS-V, the pipes will undoubtedly run near some critical stuff. Probably not an issue at all under the hood of an A-body...

Inspection: I don't know of a single longtube that is emissions legal. I've heard of folks swapping to manifolds for inspection. As you may guess, I'm not that dedicated.

But the performance benefits are undeniable. In fact, a catback does nothing on cars that already come with high output engines. My Magnaflow is just for sound. But headers (and probably cats) can free up some HP still.

Headers also famously improve ease of spark plug changes on many applications.

All that said I do have that broken off exhaust bolt in the rear hole of the driver's side head. It's not causing any problems other than a tick before it warms up and hardly worth the expense and hassle of headers by itself.

Makes sense.

Headers fit in a G-body with a small block easily too. A big block, on the other hand, requires some fancy headers that come in pieces so they can be assembled around the steering column in the car.

This guy agrees with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI3nDKE6gMs

Oh yeah I did see that. Those manifolds look nice. I am waiting for the next episode.