What are some good headers (shorty) to install on a 4.6 3valve motor? Can you tell theres a difference over the stock exhaust manifold (power wise)? What the best finish to get? worth the money?

 

Welcome to the forums as I see your a new member. If you do a search either here or within the 4.6L specific forum you will find lots of information pertaining to shorties/LT's, different brands, gains, O/R pipes, and overall gains on and off of the dyno.
You will also notice that there are several threads answering the specific questions you just asked.

 

Welcome to the forum and yes you will feel a slight increase in torque in the mid range of the RPM range on the stang with shorties not much in HP though. I recommend the BBK's or JBA's and make sure you send the extra cash for ceramic coating to have them perform and last. If you don't you should keep the stock manifolds as they are crap and NOT coated and rust very easily...... JMO

 

my advice is the same as mygt500's, i posted it in the other header thread you made...

if you can, go with the JBA's, they've got smoother bends and will perform a little better.

 

Ok, thanks for your replies.

 

For power I dont see the use of headers on these cars. The stockers flow very well, and I have seen plenty of people loose power with LT's or gain very little. You money is better spent on other mods IMO. I wont change my headers till I do a 298 stroker and run 16psi, then I think LT's are mandatory.

 

+1 on installing LTs on a more heavily modded car only. Shorties are great for a daily driver, because they increase low end to mid-range torque. When i spoke to a JBA tech rep on the phone, he said that all shorty headers had no more than a 1 hp difference. With this in mind, i got the BBK ceramic coated shorties, because they are much cheaper than JBAs. Also the owner of a local mustang performance shop showed me a new set of JBA silver ceramic shorties, just out of the box, and they had rust on the flange! This is because JBA uses carbonized steel for the flanges. BBKs are made of mild steel, and if they rust, at least i paid less for them, LOL.

 

So THAT'S why the JBA titanium ceramic shorties on my truck rusted! I would always tell people that coated headers rust too because I've SEEN it and they didn't believe me. That explains it. I paid so much for those titanium-coat headers. Never again...

 

Say whaaaat?

 

My FIRST mod on this car was longtube headers, CAI, SCT canned tune and cat-back setup. I went from 262 to 285whp. Was it the CAI? Was it the cat-back? Was it the tune? Who knows.

whtcanbrwn had a LOT more mods than me before going to longtubes. They make a BIG difference in sound output but i still wonder how much hp difference...