Pypes long tube headers installed

ViperNuge

New Member
Sep 26, 2009
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Maui
I actually was able to get my two Vette friends to come over to my warehouse and help with this weekend long install. I purchased Pypes LTs and a h pipe with hf cats, o2 xtensions and percy gaskets.

After reading many posts about this mod I had a very good idea about how to do it. One thing we did not have but would have saved loads of time was a 13mm boxed racheting flex head wrench. Trying to get a tool on some of those header nuts was really challenging. Also had to take out 3 stock studs and use the supplied shorter ones so you could actually tighten them. 5mm sockets takes them out real easy. Then had to use a tiny vice grip to tighten in the shorts ones as they had some weird ass shape that no socket would hold. Make sure you tighten all header nuts before reinstalling motor mount brackets..............opps we made that mistake. The giant 18mm steering rack bolt on drivers side sucked huge............until we remembered we had a breaker bar, and that got it out. We only loosened the passenger side. Then were able to undo steering rack and move out of the way.

H pipe went in easy cept pypes doesnt know right from left and had pipes labeled wrong! LOL Previous owner had some weird xpipe in there that was really hacked together. We used a cutting wheel and got it out. But now I am having to take it to a welder and have some custom pipe fabbed up so I can connect my h pipe to the over the axle pipe. Gonna have him weld in the HF cats after the h pipe too.

I used the two 02 xtensions to attach the front green senors to the bungs on the headers. The bungs on the collector/h pipe are too far downstream to reach the respective plug in housing on the body. What did you guys do with them? I didnt want to leave the plug housing open to weather so I taped it up. Brenspeed told me they had turned off my rear sensors but they did say most people just hook up the back ones anyway. I dont know how since mine wont reach. Anybody with an auto trans run into this problem?

Tuesday I am driving my car with its open headers, no cats or mufflers hooked up to his shop.............its gonna be stupid loud!!:eek:

Here is a vid of my open headers.

YouTube - 002.AVI

patrick
 

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the steering rack bolt your talking about. pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease tell me your not talking about the welded one on the bottom of the k member.

Um, yeah I hate to say the 18mm one that has the bolt welded on the bottom and you have to tackle it from the top. I was following directions posted on another site. It was many pages long and many people talked about how difficult it is to take off that bolt. We got it off and on and I drove the car today without any issues. Steering feels exactly the same. What did I do wrong?

On a good note, I got the new pipes fabbed up for $150 and man is it freaking LOUD even with HF cats and mufflers!!!! You can really feel the air going through the pipes now. First thing other than the noise I noticed was the throttle response. Its way better now. More instantanious, no delay. I did one run up to third gear. Feels like it pulls maybe a little more......cant really tell. I have been driving my vipertruck since Friday and that beast has crazy torque and a very tight suspension, so I am use to that. I will know next week when I race again. I am not expecting much faster times, maybe a tenth or more. Anymore than that and I will be quite stoked. I really need DR's to improve my times.

Here is another video link. The kid next door held my camera for me. Its really windy so the sound is a little mushy. Its way louder than the camera is portraying. I will get more vids later.

YouTube - mustang long tube headers, hf cats, spintech mufflers 001.AVI

On a side note, driving the car with open headers to the welding shop was quite insane. Really loud and frappy sounding......nice at idle but any gas and it was just silly. Lots of weird stares were coming my way! LOL:rlaugh:

patrick
 
well nah at first when you said it i thought you removed the bolt from the bottom. meaning breaking the welds and removing the nut on the bottom.

ive heard of a few people not realizing its welded to the k member.
 
LOL, thankfully my mechanic buddy is a GM Vette guy, but he noticed it was welded right away! I was getting a little concerned I did something wrong with how you typed out your post. LOL

I still cant believe how much louder my car is now. LTs and high flows are the only thing I changed. Took out the stock manifolds and stock cats. Those stock cats must really cut down the sound.

patrick