So here is my question and yes I have looked and could not find a definative answer.

Should I go shorty or Long Tube headers for my car? I plan on down the road going with a Roush twin screw. I guess my question is which one is better and why. On my 06 I had installed American Racing Long tubes with a catted X pipe but it was naturally aspirated. I liked the sound and fit but often wondered about shorties. I plan on staying with cats as this is a daily driver. I'm not looking to build a drag strip car but I'm looking for more drivable power and want to make sure I have the right set-up for everything to flow right. Meaning I want to buy headers now, but down the road when I decide to buy the super charger it will work with previous mods and I'm not re-purchasing stuff. I already know I will be replacing my cold air intake and tune but that was a must after buying the car... ;-)

thanks in advance for all inputs

 

I love my JBA shorty headers. I retained the stock catted mid-pipe while smoothing out the exhaust pulses (sans the equal-length primaries). Long tubes are much louder and raw sounding (especially with NSR cams). You may want that, but I like the way my exhaust sounds now with the Flowmasters. I live in a really nice neighborhood where my current exhaust is probably considered loud... LOL

There is also more low-end torque loss with long tubes, but you may not notice that when you go FI. All-in-all, you can't go wrong with equal-length shorties.

Note: You will get a lot of "long tubes or nothing" replies. But my research reveiled that long tubes with an o/r mid-pipe in reality only makes 4 - 6 more rwhp than shorty headers with an o/r mid-pipe. The big difference comes when someone with shorties will retain the factory catted mid-pipe where a long tuber has to replace the mid-pipe and usually goes with an o/r mid-pipe.

 

Shorty headers will gain you little or no performance.
Shorties sound great but if you want increased performance you need to go long tube.
Long tubes average about 15HP gain from most people.

Most real life accounts of shorties have been anywhere from 0-5HP.
Plus it is a fact that long tubes help much better on helping performance if you want
to ever supercharge or cam your car.
Those are factoids.

As for the MUCH more raw sound with long tubes... that also is varied GREATLY by
what mid pipe you use.

 

Kooks or ARH or

 

Can't go wrong with these two!

 

I had ARH on my 06 and like I said I loved them. It was definitely louder inside the car. I've read the same thing too about shorties giving you low end torque but that the long tubes help the exhaust flow better to the collector giving you more power. I'm just looking for the best result for the total package in the end I guess.

 

Here is the article in case you're interested...

http://www.mustang50magazine.com/tec...est/index.html

I just ordered a set of Kooks long tubes and H-pipe. Should be here in the next few weeks.

http://marylandspeed.com/kooks-long-...ch-p-2265.html

If you enter "freecoatkooks" in the coupon code you get the Jet Hot coating for free.

 

That chart is rather useless, as its for an old 5.0, apples to orange comparison when you take into account the 2 engines are vastly different so they will react differently.

Go with ARH, you had them before and you should get them again. If you are going with a blower down the road, you should definitely get the longtubes.

 

In my experience, longer pipes (on either the intake or exhaust side) favor low-end torque and hurt the high end, and vice-versa for short tubes. On the Formula SAE car that I worked on we were always chasing low-end torque so the runners on our intake were 22" long.

The tube length determines at what RPM the air pulses bouncing back and forth in the exhaust actually help to scavenge the cylinder. Longer tube = more time between pressure waves = better scavenging at lower RPM.

Theoretically, at least.

Unless you're planning on running your car at huge RPM most of the time, longtubes are theoretically the better choice.

This is what the exhaust looks like on a high-revving motor (Note how short the intake runners are too; practically non-existent):

 

If you plan to go FI later on and want to run cats I would not go LTs. Aftermarket cats are known to be suspect with FI applications. I have LTs and had some HF cats. I was told by JDM to cut them out before they melt.