im looking into getting new headers and want to get ones with good quality and fitement. definately ceramic coated. i currently have some cheap flowtech painted long tubes that are rusted and constantly blow out exhaust gaskets.

its a 65 conv 289 with 3sp manual, manual brakes and steering. recently installed edelbrock performer cam and intake, trick flow heads with crane cam gold 1.6 roller rockers, and a holley street avenger carb.

also, i want to swap in a 5 speed in the future and dont want to have to switch headrs again.

thanks for all your help

 

If you plan on doing a T5 conversion, I suggest JBA mid length. You won't have clutch cable interference or ground clearance issues. I have them on my 65 and they fit great. I would definitely buy them again. I would not get their H pipe though. It did not clear the trans crossmember. I ended up replacing it with pipe from an exhaust shop. It fits very nice now.

 

is the t5 belhousing much bigger than stock?

 

You can run early or late model bellhousing. The late model bell housing is longer. If you use the early bellhousing you need an adapter plate that acts like a spacer.

 

the jba mid length look really nice, and i like the idea of the thicker flanges. are the silver ceramic or titanium coatings worth the extra money? the regular stainless steel ones seem to be about $180 cheaper. does stainless discoler/rust?

 

Good quality stainless will not rust, but the ceramic coating does more than just rust prevention. Ceramic Coating limits the radiation of heat, which regular stainless pipe will not do. That is what you are paying for...cooler engine compartment.

 

stainless discolours in the typical blue when you heat it. mine have that color in parts.
but as said ceramic is the best heat insulating material known to man, so it will keep underhood cooler as urban said.
67m302 is just changing his to a set of dougs. very pricey, but seem well worth the money,

i put in stainless longtube hookers. don't go with that. horrible fit, will take forever to get somehow in and is very low to ground

 

Yeah, I just got my Doug's Ceramic Tri-Y's in the other day. Lots of ground clearance, good fit, excellent quality. Doug's are some of the more expensive headers, but you do get what you pay for. I did have to grind my bellhousing to get them to fit, BUT I'm running a Quicktime SFI housing, and it has a large flange.

The thing I like about the Doug's though, is the Tri Y design actually solves the uneven exhaust pulsing in American V8 engines, to a certain degree at least. Most American V8 race cars now run Tri-Y designs(including ALL Nextel Cup cars). But unlike most other Tri-Y's that run small tubes that hurt top end power, the Doug's run a 1-5/8 primary with a 2" secondary, so they're not a top end restriction like other Tri-Y's are. They don't make quite the top end power of a LT, but they make more bottom end and mid range(good for me with it being a street/road race type setup since it spreads the power out more where I need it most), but the Doug's make more top end than other Tri-Y designs.

In the end with ANY headers, Doug's, Doug Thorley, JBA....most of what you pay for is quality, fitment, ground clearance and performance. If you pay $150 for headers you get something that fits like crap, blocks clutch linkage, prevents you from removing 1 or more spark plugs, scrapes everything, and cheats you out of power and falls apart in short order. If you pay $600 for headers, you get something that makes the best power, and has 0 issues with fitment or clearance.

And look on the bright side, some of the Doug's or JBA headers for newer cars like C6 Vettes or new Mustangs can run as much as $1,200-1,500. So be glad you have a Classic.

 

i will want to pay the extra for quality and something that will last. the last set i had did cost about $150 and must have took 6 hours to install. a huge pain, poor fitment and had to tighten the bolts a 1/4 turn each at a time to install, after blowing out a few gaskets i realized it was just easier to deal with the ticking lol. save my back at least.

thank you guys for all your input, i will definately get the ceramic coating and think i am leaning towards the tri y's for low end, usually keep her under 5k rpms anyways

 

Pfffft, my car still pulls the same over 6,000rpm with the Tri-Y's as it did with the LT's. Maybe even better, couldn't say for certain. I can vouch for Doug's headers for fitment and quality. I've heard JBA's are pretty good as well.