A friend of mine today suggested adding exhaust to my 1984 Trans Am, but seeing as how this is my 1st car of this type, I am
quite ignorant about this. What exactly is an exhaust system? What does it do for the car? How much can I expect to spend?
Where's a good place online to order one (so I can get some general info about them)? How hard are they to install? Is it even worth
doing? Which one would you suggest?Basically, anything and everything you can tell me would be great! Thanks!

 

since it doesn't sound like you know much of what you're getting into, either take you're car in for new exhaust, or order what you want and have the local muffler shop put it on. i don't know how much money you have to blow, but a cool sounding exhaust is one of the most important mods once you've taken care of making sure the car is safe to drive and reliable. i will soon be putting on a dynomax cat back on my 84 camaro. i picked it because it is the cheapest- $135 from J C Whitney. have fun

 

Hmmm, although some of the things berlinetta said (hey i have an 84 B too) were true, although I disagree that the sound is the most important, that almost sounds like a rice statement (very forgiveable because cool exhaust is nice), but to start answering your questions as i remember them. Exhaust, well your engine takes in air, and burns it, and as you know fire makes smoke, in this case its more well, exhaust, than smoke, but rudimentarily the same. So the exhaust system is a series of pipes starting with the manifolds, basically big pans towards the middle or so of the block that collect the expended gas and send it into a single pipe, on your car probably a 2" pipe. As for the manifolds there is one on each side. And you might have heard of headers, they replace manifolds. They function basically the same except gobs more efficient. They have a pipe leading from each outlet, 4 on each side, with about 1.25" to 1.75" pipes, to a big "collecter" 2.5" or 3" which combines all of the flow into a single pipe from there. From there, either collecter, or in your case manifold, it leads to a catalytic converter, which reburns the exhaust, and I believe it also sends some back into combustion chamber to cool down temps. From there it leads to what I believe is called an intermediary pipe and then to the muffler, which quiets the sound coming out. As for is it worth it, it holds more appeal than just cool factor. A cat back will get you small gains performance wise as it allows the engine to breathe a little bit easier. Now if you start with the manifolds and replace them as well as everything else back you could see very large gains. As for your other question price, you could spend as little as 500-600 or as much as you want to, up in to the thousands (for custom true dual exhaust). Sorry about the length but it sounded like you didn't have much of a base to start from.

 

Tacoboy, thanks for all of the info! This has definitely helped me! Now for the challenge of deciding which brand to buy...any suggestions?