I have a 1991 z28, and I'm doing a emissions delete. I removed the smog pump, and pretty much all of the pollution control stuff. Now if I was going to put headers on and I wanted to connect to the stock exhaust, what kind of header should I buy.

 

theres almost no point in hooking headers to your stock exhaust. you wont notice enough horsepower to justify spending the money on them. you might want to get a set of 1 3/4 shortys or maybee a set of lngtube 2210 headers and run a 3'' exhaust then you will notice a good difference.

 

Hedman shorties and y-pipe (cant use the factory y-pipe).

get them coated if you want,but they fit awesome and havent had any problems w/ them and ive had them for a couple years now.

 

Well, first off you've told us very little about the car or motor, so any suggestions you get here will be of the "best guess" variety. With that in mind, I'm going to go out on a limb & guess that it's a stock or near-stock TPI motor.

If that's the case, I'd suggest that you look at a good name-brand (Hooker, SLP, etc.) header with a 1-5/8" primary. If you go any bigger (like I did, with a 1-3/4" primary ) you're just going to lose some torque, & you're not likely to be able to move enough air up top to justify the bigger header.

In other words, if you're not running a 383/396/400+ ci motor, don't be dumb like I was!

(And just as an additional data point, I've heard mixed reviews about the Edelbrock TES headers - but YMMV...)

 

what did you do that was so dumb?

i agree that 1 5/8th headers would be better for a stock tpi. however if you plan on doing further mods like heads cam ect..ect which probraly you do then i would get 1 3/4.

 

Yeah it is stock, but the plenum is ported.

 

Another vote for the Heddmans. I have them I got from JetHot with the Y pipe. Fit and finish is nice. The headers are the same as the hooker 2460's.

 

for starters 1-5/8 shorties are fine for 350s but the pitch off is this;
1-5/8 has to have a 3'' collector like the hooker/heddman,this makes a huge difference in performance.
since slp has the only set of 1-3/4 shorties they dont have a 3'' collector but it flows due to the primary tube size,dont use the slp y-pipe its only 2.25 get one made in 2.5'' big difference. proof of the pudding me and my freind had 91z28s in 92 we both ran 13.9 on radials w/1.8 60's he bought the entire slp 1-3/4s,y-pipe,and cat-bac system hi-flo cats 1500.00, i wasnt about to spend that money so i went and got the hooker 1-5/8,custom 2.5'' y-pipe,3'' intermediate pipe and a dynomax muffler and hi-flo cats 500.00, now at this point we both had ported slp runners,58mm tb,pulleys,cut air boxes w/k&ns,slp 2400 stall,3.23 gears(factory)subframes:
his best run--------13.36
my best run--------13.30
i destroyed my 4l60 so i put a t-5 in it,at that point i ran a personal best of
13.06 i could not hit the 12s for nothin but with a bolt-on car that is flyin.i spent less and really got more,i then used the slp cam 495/510 w/1.6s and ported vette heads and ran 12.26 fastest pass(on tire m&h racemasters)...

 

OK, sounds like we're on the same page then.

I based my 1-5/8" recommendation on this part of his question:

If that's the case, then the rest of the engine is probably fairly mild, & while the 1-3/4" primaries will certainly work for a mild engine, they're not optimal. By the time you start getting to where they really work well, the TPI intake is out of breath. (So it's a mis-matched combo.)

But yeah, my plans include a stroker crank (after I get the AFR 195s -& then the cam- that I'm saving for) to match my HSR, once I put those together, then the 1-3/4 primaries will be right in the sweet spot!

 

I'm very happy with my hooker 2055 headers and y-pipe. Ceramic coated, air tubes cut off and welded over. I also took the time to make the ball flange on the shorties larger, which probably made a difference but I've never tried them stock.

The Y-pipe on the 2055's is really nice. A nice 3" piece.

 

on the 2055's... do you just cut off all tubes if you are gettin rid of emissions or are there some you need to keep? Any pics?

 

Just cut the air tubes off and weld them, some ppl I think have plugged them with like a pipe plug, but I would just weld them to be safe. If you don't have a welder I imagine 10-20 bucks at your local garage would get it done. The tubing gauge on the 2055 is thinner then the 2460 giving you slightly more cross sectional area. And the Y-Pipe is where the magic is at. That Y-Pipe is a beautiful 3" pipe. You can cut the ball flange up a bit and open the collector to about 2"ID I believe. Check thirdgen.org and lookup five7kid he has talked about this numerous times. For the price and what you get with a few minimal mods I say Hooker 2055 kit would be perfect for you.

This is what I'm using until I step up to a 383 ant then will invest in coated 2210's