I'd say it depends on your goals. If you go turbo in the future, don't bother investing in LTs. If going any other route, go ahead and go with LTs, unless you plan on significantly lowering your car 2"+...

 

would you have to get anything tuned if you went with short tubes. Also how much of a difference would lt's make over shortites as far as power goes.

Would it be possible to pass emission tests and not **** off the sound police with no cats.?

Thanks

 

Your car won't be too loud without cats but you wouldn't pass emissions. however, you wouldn't pass emissions anyways with LT's so if you go the LT route IMO I'd scrap the cats. Cheaper and sounds nicer

 

I have probably heard of 1 person for every 100 people who switched to longtubes from shorties and said they didnt have better times or higher trap speeds and wanted to switch back. I have heard of one person ever switching from longtubes to shorties and saying it "felt" faster.

I save seen about 100 posts where people say "Switching from Shorties to Longtubes..blah blah blah" Do it once and do it right. Get the longtubes if you dont have emissions. Ask mustangmuncher, his sig says "I wish I went with longtubes to begin with" or something like that.

-Dustin-

 

Definitely go with the LT's. My car had shorties already installed when i bought it but I switched em out for a set of FLP lt's over the summer and don't have a single regret. I didn't feel any loss of low end power at all either.

 

My personal experience having owned both....

The LTs sound a lot better... smoother exhaust note.

The LTs take up a ton of ground clearance at least with Hookers where the SLP shorties I ran didnt give up any.

The heat generated by the Hookers or the way they were routed at least caused my stock motor mounts to sag due to the heat being so close to them. I had to upgrade to poly motor mounts within 6 months because the headers gradually started rubbing the kmember and steering linkage. Prior to the Hookers I had been running SLP shorties(single-cat version) for 2+ years.

My car pretty much runs the same as it did with the shorty headers. I put down the numbers in my sig with XE224/230 and SLP shorties without a cutout so if you told me they were costing me power I might give you one of these.

 

If you are saying LTs with cats would fail emissions, that is a false statement in most locations.

Don't know where the OP is located, so may or may not be true for him.

 

LT's if you don't have emissions and a nice set of mids (MAC or ASM) if you do. You won't be sorry.

 

would it even be possible to hook up a cat to lt's?

 

Yes, you could have a Y-pipe made with them inline or run a single at the end of the Y where it meets the I pipe.

-Dustin-

 

My Pacesetter ORY is customized with two cats. so it is possible.

 

In theory LT's should give you more hp. However, my 94 formula picked up 5 mph with a set of mac shorties and my 96 has only picked up 1 mph so far with LT's.

 

Get ceramic longtubes. The shorties may actually give you more peak hp, but who cares. The length of the primary tube affects the point at which peak torque occurs (longer= peak torque @ lower rpm), and the size of the primary affects the torque curve- in other words, a bigger tube will have less torque before the peak, but more after the peak. There's some good articles about that kind of stuff in several magazines and online. Collector length is also an important factor, and of course the collectors on most street headers are too short, which basically means that a set of glasspacks right behind the headers is the optimum setup if you're not worried about emissions or noise regulations. But anyway, remember that it's torque that shoves you back in your seat, not horsepower, which is one reason why longtubes are much more popular.

 

There are mid-length options available too. They generally provide *almost* the performance of LT's, without the ground clearance issues.

 

i say shorties unless you have some really big mods in the future.
but get the 94 95 style headers.
i dynoed the same with edelbrock shorties as i did with flp long tubes.
i squeesed 1 more mph out of the car at the track but doesnt sound like thats worth the extra money for you.