Well, me and my buddy went to work on my exhaust yet again. ended up cutting a custom catback out of some additonal pipe along with the Downey kit. It wound up looking nothing like the Downey kit whatsoever. I am much happier that we did it ourselves. everything from the muffler back is welded. Still have one header downpipe leaking a bit. Now my Idle sucks. bounces between just about to stall and 800. When I tweak my Idle set screw, or put pressure on my throttle cable, it just bounces at a higher idle. I have seen a thread around here that talked about an exhaust leak causing the idle to bounce just like this but to me it seems a little strange. Can someone educate me please?

 

what are thoes headers and do they make them for sbf

 

Sorry guys, my ADD has stopped me from reading everything once again. EGR means exhaust gas recirculation. From what I know, it basically scavenges fuel from the exhaust and puts it back through for a second round of burning. It's a pollution/fuel economy part. I put a crate motor in my 85 lifted chevy silverado and didn't hook up the egr system, just left it in there to look complete.... not like we have pollution inspections in minnesota...
Headers are nice mods, but they are not to me messed up. It takes either superior parts or perfect installation to keep from forming a leak. A leak can damage some expensive stuff, so make sure you torque stuff to the specs and then recheck after a couple hours of run time.
Here comes a little college/turbo car experience at ya.... ceramic coating is nothing more than a heat shield. You want that hot gas to go out the exhaust and out the tailpipe, not heating up other engine components or warming the engine bay. The whole idea is that ceramics don't conduct heat or electricity like metals do. So, since those metal headers have a "barrier" that heat can't "touch", that heat is forced to move on down the line to the exhaust and out the back. That said, there isn't much of a reason to ceramic coat the inside, cause if it's on the outside heat will be confined to the interior air space as well as steel structure of the header. I honestly can't tell by looking at the pics, but I can say ceramic is like dullish looking chrome without so much shine. Do it right the first time on that header, they're a bitch to deal with after heat has changed everything!

 

So how is that Downey muffler and cat? Is it pretty loud?

 

quite loud. It sounds great, but my truck, won't hold Idle for dammit! When I am on the throttle it sounds menacing., but that's mostly from the headers. I get looks all the time. The Downey Muffler and Cat is just a magnaflow with a downey stamp on the muffler. I seriously doubt that I will get this sucker to get past Arizona emissions next year though. I smell strong exhaust when I am outside the truck. The plumbing that they sent for the exhaust system sucked and i had to do a lot of cutting and welding. It was a learning experience. The crossover is nice, but the piping from the muffler to the tailpipe that goes over the rear axle is a POS. slip fit sucks. I had to get Napa stainless steel clamps to stop the leaks, and they were $13 each. All in all, I would go and have the exhaust done at a shop or get some J-bends off of SummitRacing if you can weld.