Well I have joined the club of people that have experienced the pain the a$$ of installing this M'fers. Thanks a ton to a couple of buddies that helped with the install (Z28ROC included man!) I ended up having to get some AIR pump fittings off of a 95 though, because the screw on is too SMALL on the 97s to fit in the connector provided on the new headers. Other than that everythign seems peachy. A couple of questions though.

First, I still need to put the new air pump fittings on (right now the current ones are jerry-rigged on there. Woudl this be the cause of some moderate almost hissing like sound I'm hearing when under more than half throttle. I assumed this would fix it and will find out later this afternoon.
This will be updated but I did want to check and see if that's maybe a symptom of an exhaust leak? I didn't see anything obvious and everything still looks real secure and tight. What do you guys think?

Thanks a ton, this website helped me get these suckers on easier than doing it by feel! Good tips and links all around!

 

Hissing could be an exhuast leak, but if it were at the AIR fittings, I believe it would sound more like a tick.

How is the performance? Had a chance to check it out? Ar you running a cat?

Dan

 

Did you place spacers in the air fittings on the headers before installing the air tube? If not there will be play in the air tube and youll be able to jiggle it up and down. Exhaust can leak since there is no seal and it may be the soure of the sound youre hearing.

 

Well I found some air pump connectors off of a 95 at the junkyard yesterday so I'll be putting them on here in a few minutes, there shouldn't be any play on it at this point so I'll see if the noise is still there and update here. I am *hoping* that the noise is because the air pump doesn't have a really secure connection right now. More to come.

The power is DEFINITELY higher than before. I still have a cat on the car as well, to answer your question about that.

 

Put the new AIR pump fittings on, they screwed in fine but I still have a hiss or ticklike thing happening when I'm more than half throttle on the ignition (i can only hear it between 2k-3k rpms, before the borla overpowers the noise)

It's not too loud, but it's definitely there and I can hear it inside the cabin of the car? Is this an exhaust leak, or something else, what do you guys think?

 

If it's a hiss, it might be from your cat area. I would check for carbon deposits around there.

Are all of your vacuum lines hooked up well?

Get one of those extendable mirrors and look at all the welds where the 4 primaries combine on the collectors. I actually had a bad weld there from MAC, on the drivers side. Mine sounded more like a pfft, pfft coming from the collector though. Here's where mine was leaking:

Header Leak

Dan

 

The noise very much coincides with how much gas I give it and the RPMs. I would try to record it, but you probably wouldn't be able to really make it out. It seems like it does attribute to some power loss though. It's almost a sound like the engine is sorta chugging?

I'll check the Cat - could be part of the problem.

Thanks for the info man, I was doing a search earlier about exhaust leaks and saw that picture -- I did check that, didnt' see anything quite like that, I think the primaries are OK. How will I know if the cat is the problem(visually) ?

 

Are you sure it's not just your CAI, if you have one?

 

It's definitely NOT the CAI. I've had that and I know what it sounds like. This is much more RPM dependant, almost mechanical noise that I get under half throttle or higher. It doesn't seem to really do it if I just rev in Neutral though.