Good point, Beef. Although I have heard from a few L owners , that the header tube shape alone cures any cylinder leanness ( #5 , and #3) due to the elimination of the stock manifold's poor design (too much angle after the port) on these cylinders. This may be a good reason to switch to headers, alone. Any headers!

 

I think you need to drive out and have Sal dyno tune your truck. That would boast higher numbers and take more advantage of the headers.



And another thing, headers tend to give power throughout the whole rpm band. So say someone (maybe even beefcake) may see 5hp increase in peak power, he may see as much as 10hp or more at different rpm's.

 

captain, you must have missed the part where i said that i had my a/f checked and it was almost identical before and after the long tubes,

the 5/10 increase was throughout the whole powerband, but on a vehicle that weights nearly 5000 pounds, that isn't going to give you much

 

I'm under the impression that the tuners still have these little tricks and secrets that we have no clue about, plus it's not all about the a/f ratios (though almost everything affects it).

Well I'll be getting a dyno, custom tune, and dyno again to see what a custom tune can really do

 

It seems most of you say the "shorty" headers aren't worth the money, and that they won't add much power. Well I remember reading results in Sport Truck magazine about them testing JBA's "shorty" headers on a '01 L. They have the dyno sheet in the magazine and the JBA's produced 21 HP and 33 ft/lb of torque after the installation. The title of the article is: "Unplugging your Lightning". Does anyone have JBA's headers that can back this up? What is evryone's opinion about them?

 

captain, if you have a wide band o2, you don't need a dyno as you can tune it on the street which is what me and SAL did,

the timing is set where it's supposed to be, and the a/f is set where it's supposed to be ,

that's pretty much what you do for power, there are other tricks such as lock up points on the convertor, ect... which will help et.

but with the a/f being the same and timing being the same, power was about the same....

i'm not saying i couldn't get more power out of a leaner tune or such, but we're talking about what the headers do, and with the tune being the same before and after the headers, there wasn't much of a gain,

that's a true test

 

Beef,

They seem to slow down when they are lean. I know because I just tried it. The leaner chip I had in it for 2 days slowed it down. I'm getting mine fatten up right now. I had a little fuel added when I first put the headers on and it ran about the same unless the weather was hot (80 or above). In hotter temps it ran better than I expected. I have a feeling if it had more fuel when it was cooler the times would have been better too.

Without a reburn, I could see people running slower after installing longtubes. Like I said it was fattened some but maybe not enough. I will let you know how it turns out with even more fuel.

 

beef - OK I understand completely where your coming from on this.

LTNBOLT - interesting, thats something I've never read before

 

these trucks don't necessarily like timing, but to not like a/f too, that's kinda odd,

lean is power, plain and simple