I had Hooker LT's on my car for two years and had many debates on why they never made much of a differance. I finally came to the conclusion that Hooker LT's are too aggresive for a mostly stock 2.73 car like mine. Well new emissions laws here forced me to ditch the Hooker LT's for a set of RK sports I got off a member here. I did the swap this weekend (and smashed my finger nicely trying to get the #@$#@%$#$%#$%^%$$# dipstick back in). Installing the RK's was ALOT easier than my Hookers, however everything else was ungodly harder. Mainly the collectors on the RK's are impossible to get tight (bolts too hard to get to) and the forementioned dipstick which was a breeze with the Hookersa did NOT fit with the RK's. Put it this was I spent almost as much time trying to get the bolt in that dipstick holder as I did on the whole header install. I'm now curious to see what times I will run. Best times with a homemade CAI, TB bypass, and Flowmaster catback was 13.89 at 101, with the Hookers my best time was 13.61 at 102. Driving the car around with the RK's was nice, the car is alot quieter with the high flow cat/RK combo. The Flowmaster actually sounds good again, it sounded awful with no cat and the LT's. Subjective opinions?? The car feels quicker. The bottom end power seems to have come back, but I still have the midrange rush I had with the LT's. Another thing I noted, with the LT's it chirped 2nd, with the RK setup it gets sideways in 2nd and chirps 3rd. Still that's SOTP feel which can be misleading. This friday is the first time I'll be racing my car with this new seup (providing I can get it inspected this week)-anyone willing to bet what my times will be?? Slower?? Faster?? May have to put the flame suit off if it rips off some 13.5's.........

 

Well good luck and let us know the results. I felt a big sotp difference with my hooker lt's. I also pulled about 3 car lengths on a ls1 trans am from a 15mph roll to about 110mph. My car also is running very rich because of an exhaust leak. I like the rk sport headers. I bought as&m's(same as rk sport) and was gonna do the single cat conversion but the headers were defective and to make a long story short i received poor quality headers from them 3 times so i went with the hooker lt's. But i think that the as&m and rk sport headers are great headers and are just as good as lt's untill your car is highly modded.

 

I just put some RKs on last week and I feel your pain on the dipstick tube My car seems to rev alot quicker nad I'm very happy with the results (after some fine tweaking and clearancing).

Good Luck!

 

I put them on my car and also had a HELL of a time with the dipstick. In the end it did not leak, but I couldn't get the bolt on it was so messed up and bent up, so I decided to get the lokar dipstick.

Well last night I decided to put it in, and it slid right in. I can't figure out how 4th header bolt is going to go through the dipstick bracket like it says in the instructions. I got pissed off and quit, but I guess all get back out there tonight and try some more.

Any lokar dipstick ideas will be appreciated!

BTW I have the flowmaster american thunder with no cat and the car is extremely loud. It really screams from 3000-6000 rpm

 

I had to grind and bend the bracket before I put the dipstick tube in. Then once it started to slip in, I had to bend the tube just below the bracket and bend the bracket back into place and use a longer bolt for the tube. All took about 2 hrs

 

How about some 1/4 times there Baron...?

-Dustin-

 

I can't believe you picked up only 1 mph with LTs. I'd say you were getting false knock possibly, or some other tuning issue. My car picked up a proven 40 RWHP peak, with gains from idle on up in horsepower AND torque. It also picked up 6 mph in the 1/4. I mean, heck, it picked up 13 RWHP and 30 ft.lbs of torque at 2100 rpms. Max gains were 46 rwhp and 55 ft.lbs at 4200 rpms. Did you every dyno your car? I'd be hesitant to even say that a 1/4 mile run would be an accurate comparison between the 2. Either way, I hope the car is faster now for you.

 

Well I bought his Hookers and Mufflex off him and am going to put them on soon. I was just looking for a comparison.

Any pointers on how to get those kind of numbers out of LT's?

I would burst into tears of joy if I reaped 46 rwhp and 55 ft/lbs anywhere in the power range

Do you have the graphs? I am very interested in making numbers like that...

Let me know.

 

Here is a graph of the 2 dyno pulls.

Stock dyno is bone stock down to dirty paper air filter


LT dyno was LTs, x-pipe and duals, and CAI. No other mods

http://home.sc.rr.com/screaminz28/stockvlt.JPG

 

Baron, so would you pick AS&M/RK or Hookers as your header of choice?

-Dustin-

 

I have longtubes on my car and I love them. However, I'm trying to track down an exhaust leak, and I hit a massive bump in the road the other day which bent 4 of my primaries. bad ground clearance sucks

 

This is a part I find interesting...and am wondering about the real track gains. My car chirps 2nd with only a catback, so with headers and a CAI...WOO!! WOO!!

But with that said would AS&M/RK's be better than the Hookers I am thinking of installing?

I am also worried about ground clearance...

-Dustin-

 

Did you get it tuned with the hookers? I have jethots, and went from 278rwhp to 303 rwhp on a more conservative dyno on the second run. All I changed was the jethot longtubes, hooker y-pipe, and pcmforless.com tune. I went from a 13.78@100.6 to the best in sig. The 60' dropped .2, but I also picked up 4mph which shows the power.

 

Well, I've always thought that anything made by hooker was overrated, the long tubes mostly, then their catbacks.. but anyway...... the AS&Ms will dyno right with LTs on just about anything

 

I have the hooker catback, and everyone loves how my car sounds. The first words out of the owner of an SRT-4 I beat were, "That thing sounds badass." All the other catbacks that I heard with longtubes and no cats were raspy as hell.