well, i may need to put an actual exhaust on now. had on old lady cover her ears and glare at me today driving the car. which almost made me feel bad, almost. i have been looking at pics and have a hard time seeing, the hawks ssw headers ground clearance. how low are they. i do want to drop the front a little eventually, so how low past the framerails do they hang. i'll fab a y, so i'm not too worried about that part. i just dont want to listen to $800 headers scraping the ground all the time.

 

next time pull over and ask her not to be such a drama queen. You think she covers hear ears every time she revs up her sewing machine?

 

lmao! i have hawks headers on my car and they do not hit. and my car is pretty low. (coilovers) but if you do decide on an exhaust id go the electric cutout/maganflow path. the magnaflow is quiet under mild acceleration and wakes up under wot. and for racing/scaring old women you have the cutout.

 

maybe she drops to the ground when harleys with the baffles cut out drive by

 

I like that

 

so the concensus is that they really don't scrape much at all? i'm already planning on cutouts for when i want it loud.

 

ive NEVER had mine scrape

 

Why would you ever want it loud?

(And, yes, I am serious.)

 

unless im racing i like mine quite.

 

I don't know anyone from my friends or family who doesn't like the sound of my exhaust (headers to original 40 series flowmaster) and that thing shakes the earth at idle. Some people, aside from you obviously, love the sound of rumbling engines unfiltered, or mildly filtered.

Speaking from experience here, just had my exhaust redone, and I had him stop after unbolting it all from the headers back, so that it was just dumping from the headers. Drove it around town (stupid i know, could have gotten impounded or worse) but the whole time I couldn't get that huge grin off my face, the intense vibrations the whole car shook each time I revved or accelerated. Priceless.

Have you never driven a powerful car dumping from the headers? I can't imagine anyone not enjoying the powerful sound of an engine screaming at thousands of rpms at least occasionally. Not always that loud, but occasionally.


However, to the OP, if I were you I would not spend $800 on headers. Performance headers can be had for MUCH less, but do as you see fit it is your car after all.

But, with respect, I have found the older you get, the more you care about noise pollution, and I can understand your question, I just don't agree and it seems I speak for the guy you asked as well.

 

High performance headers CAN be had for less than $800, true. But not when you're talking about for an LS1 swap. The average price you'll find on swap headers is $700+ depending on what size and finish you want.

 

Have I ever driven a powerful car? Well, 500 HP probably doesn't qualify.

At the track, I have avoided a catastrophic failure because I had mufflers and could hear something wasn't quite right. I never would have heard it with open headers.

I've also done back-to-back runs at a test & tune with open and corked exhaust. The open headers always "felt" faster. The timeslips showed that the corked exhaust was always faster.

 

A tuned exhaust will always out perform open headers regardless of sound level. In nearly all cases open headers are NOT ideal for any engine combo, just the science to find out the best system is pretty complicated

 

No back pressure means no torque

 

My car is stock rode height, but as far as the tuck up, you would hit more than the headers if you bottom the Hawks headers out. I could not ask for much more.

 

I'll second that. From what I have experienced the last three decades of DIY messing with Jap bikes and US cars intake flow, cam profile, and exhaust flow must work in concert to produce the torque and power in the rpm range you use the engine. Fortunately for me the exhaust restriction required for the 'occasionally' spirited way I drive is obtained with the quieter mufflers. One of the sweetest sounds I can always remember from decades ago was the exhaust pulses hitting the LT header tubes on my 440 powered '71 GTX that was muffled with OEM equivalent Walker mufflers. To me that is the preferable sound of power.