Opinions on Chrome Headers

eades5.0 said:

Just found a real good deal on some barely used longtubes. They are BBK's. I've always been a Ceramic guy, but for this price I think I might buy them. Just wondering what your guys exp. has been with chrome headers.
I'm not worried about them turning blue becuae they'll match the car lol, just wondering about durabilty down the road..rusting, flaking, etc...

I keep saying I could always send them to JetHot in a few years if they begin to look like crap.
I'm running BBK 1 5/8 Ceramic shorties now and they still look great after 2+ years. The headers in question are 1 3/4 LT's so I'm a bit excited about the power gains as well.

Chris

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Say chris.....how are the bbk 1 5/8 chrome shorties for our stangs? I JUST got mine but i'm getting those installed soon....just curious if you seen,heard, and felt a big difference from your stock ones?

They're good for everything except maintaining good looks. If you don't have a show car or aren't really anal, go for it. Like you said, a trip to Jet Hot will fix that quickly. I almost did the same but I got the ceramic BBKs.

Speaking of that, they made my exhaust a nice bit deeper, along with the installation of a catted H pipe 2.5". prior to those, I had just a MAC catback system, which was nice and grumbly to begin with (way better than Flows, at least in the DEEPNESS category, which happens to be my preference versus nasally hollow sounds of Flows & offroad H).

Power is tough to say, I installed the H pipe, headers, a new throttle body, and tightened my blower belt all at the same time, along with a couple other minor things.

Given the pain of removal and reinstallation, if you want them coated, I'd have it done first. Chances are you won't want to take them back off later - and with regular use they'll likely blue first and corrode later.

"I think the shorties are worth around a 15hp jump on a stock motor" Per the dyno, I LOST 3hp when I installed shorties on my mild combo. While the numbers on dyno's aren't accurate enough to call it that close, people's experience seems to be that for a header change only (not the rest of the system) the stock headers aren't a bottleneck until you get up to around 280-290 HP. At least in terms of replacing them with shorties. Long tubes are a different story - should be very noticeable gains in the low and mid range, and perhaps a bit up top.