Yeah, i live in california and it sucks. So I need shorty headers to pass smog. No I wont buy long tubes and take them to shady shops. I just want legal shorties that will pass the visual. My price goal is $500 or less. I've seen the SLP but I imagine there are better ot there. Let me know, thanks.

 

I'm running JBA's, they're smog legal but they're going to cost you more than $500.

 

Uh what about mac midlengths? THey have all the hook ups

 

Edelbrock TES are smog legal, i have them on my car right now, and they only cost 360 shipped. They are nowhere near the best, but they'll pass the visual and have the CARB stamp on the headers on the driver side with all the hook ups.

And no matter what, they're still headers, and I got alot more power, better throttle responce and smoother everything out of mine. It was a definite improvement.

 

There's a guy in socal selling SLP 1 3/4 coated headers and ypipe for $450. I'm pretty positive those are emissions legal assuming you only have a single cat car.

I on the other hand am going to take my chances with long tubes

 

anyone know if BBK is CARB legal? I can't seem to find any info. I've been drifting between BBK, SLP and now Edelbrock. They're all pretty close in price. Anyone know of genuine performance gains from them?

btw I have dual cats unfortunately.

 

Unfortunatley?! Dude **** you for saying that. lol most of us wish we had a trual dual setup.

Anyways, I was lookin at BBK too and i couldn't find ANYTHING on them as far as being Legal. I'm pretty sure they aren't though, in some of the pics i found i didn't see any hook ups for anything.

The SLP's are going to give you the best gains as far as HP goes, but are the most expensive of the 3. The edelbrock's will give you a performance gain too, and a good one. I can't say about the BBK's though, but they seem to made out of good material though.

I would go with the SLP's if you can afford them, and the Edelbrocks if you can't. Eitherway you're going to get a pretty good gain.

Look more into the MAC midlength headers, i didn't know about them when i was getting mine and i wish i would have looked into it more. A midlength header is going to give you a better performance gain and a better sound as well. As long as they have all the hook ups and have CARB/EO # then you'll be fine on the visual.

 

Being a resident in the Republik of Kalifornia, I can tell you that the CARB EO#'s are the end all of performance parts if you ask the state.

Any midlength will not have a CARB EO#, for the same reason long tubes don't. They will likely never have one.

As far as your choices on shorties, I beilieve BBK does have a CARB EO#, but I'd stay away from their product. I ordered a set of BBK headers, and when I recieved them, they were bar none, the worst header I've ever seen - holes in the welds, the flange was warped - and I did what I thought was the right thing and called BBK directly. Since I live about 20 minutes away from their shop, I offered to drive down and exchange them for a set that was defect free. They refused, and told me to send them back to Jeg's where I got them. I understand the whole distributorship concept, but was floored that they would not make good on a product they would eventually get back anyway. Bad product, worse customer service.


I'd stay with the SLP or JBA's. The SLP are 1 3/4" primary and the JBA are 1 5/8" primary. On a mildly modded engine, the differences are neglegible. Once you get into more serious mods, the differences start to become apparent, but some would argue that at some point, shorties themselves become the bottleneck and that longtubes/midlengths are necessary for some HP goals.

I'll take my chances and stick with the long tubes too.

 

He doesn't have true duals...he has dual cats. Actually technically that restricts his choice of headers, because he can't buy single cat headers, which are supposed to be better and are also cheaper.

Just get the long tubes and swap the manifolds in every 2 years. After a few years you'll be a pro

 

thanks for correcting him

The JBA headers are damn expensive fo my Z though, nearly 1k at Summit.

In all seriousness how big a difference is there between 1 5/8" and 1 3/4" primaries? It seems like the bigger one would be better.

 

I didn't know that heh.

the 1-3/4" are better because they allow more air to flow through them.

 

so anyone actually running the 1 3/4" SLP headers?

also, is coating really that big of a deal? I mean if headers are manufactured from 304 stainless steel I have a hard time believing they'd rust, especially here in california.