Gagfish
06-04-2004, 04:43 PM
I'm planning on replacing my stock system with the one from Kooks but I would probably rather keep the stock manifold and just replace it from there back to the tailpipes. I wanted to see what others thought of this.
It seems from reading the other threads that replacing just the manifolds with the headers will only give you minimal gains while replacing the whole system will be a quite significant improvement. Can it be implied from this that it is not the manifolds that are very restrictive, but the rest of the system (cats, mufflers)? Also, it seems that installing headers is no easy task on this car and the engine may need to be unmounted to do so. I'm also concerned with the long-term effects on the other under-hood components with such a heat increase generated by headers. I'm assuming the performance gain will not be as good as if I do install headers, but how far off would it be? Lastly, will the x-pipe with cats and mufflers just bolt up to the existing system (manifolds, tail pipes) or does some welding and fabrication need to be done? Thanks for any input.
It seems from reading the other threads that replacing just the manifolds with the headers will only give you minimal gains while replacing the whole system will be a quite significant improvement. Can it be implied from this that it is not the manifolds that are very restrictive, but the rest of the system (cats, mufflers)? Also, it seems that installing headers is no easy task on this car and the engine may need to be unmounted to do so. I'm also concerned with the long-term effects on the other under-hood components with such a heat increase generated by headers. I'm assuming the performance gain will not be as good as if I do install headers, but how far off would it be? Lastly, will the x-pipe with cats and mufflers just bolt up to the existing system (manifolds, tail pipes) or does some welding and fabrication need to be done? Thanks for any input.