[Steve91T]

Man I'm excited. Dailydriver posted his car for sale and I could tell from that add that it was much loved and well taken care of. Unfortunately a nasty knock on the engine forced him to sell it. I thought this could be the perfect car for my dad.

This car looks amazing for having 172k miles. It is pretty rare to find a 1 owner car these days.

So, first things first. I had the car for all of 30 seconds before I broke it. I dragged the exhaust pulling into my driveway and separated the car back from the y pipe. So today I fixed that so the exhaust wasn't dragging on the ground anymore. Next, I need to make room for all the parts Dave packed into the car. It's completely full of parts. Thanks Dave! And finally, I need to figure out what's up with the engine. It has a nasty knock. It has great oil pressure, runs smooth, no smoke, but knocks really bad. I think it's a lifter, but I don't know. I think I'm going to pull the valve covers and see what I find. As well as this car has been taken care of, I'm hoping the engine is healty. I'd love to just replace some lifters and let my dad enjoy this car for a while.

Anyway, let me know what you guys would do to diagnose this knock.


https://youtu.be/AJUsOvgpnmg

https://youtu.be/otobYePJLyo

[dojob]

Cool. I know you can run any cam without headers, but they don't always like it due to dilution of the incoming air charge (because of poor cylinder scavenging). I expected them to push you towards the 114 LSA cam without headers. Interesting.

I think you'd have to be at more then 350 RWHP. The SOM SS I had dynoed at 329 RWHP and it only had a lid and an exhaust on it. That cam has to be worth more than 21 hp. I'm curious to see what kind of results you get since I'm in the "don't want to deal with headers" crowd too. I might change my mind at some point....maybe. I just want to keep this one headache free, a car you can hop in and drive to the west coast without any issues.

why would headers cause driving/reliability issues?

[trackbird]

Cool. I know you can run any cam without headers, but they don't always like it due to dilution of the incoming air charge (because of poor cylinder scavenging). I expected them to push you towards the 114 LSA cam without headers. Interesting.

I think you'd have to be at more then 350 RWHP. The SOM SS I had dynoed at 329 RWHP and it only had a lid and an exhaust on it. That cam has to be worth more than 21 hp. I'm curious to see what kind of results you get since I'm in the "don't want to deal with headers" crowd too. I might change my mind at some point....maybe. I just want to keep this one headache free, a car you can hop in and drive to the west coast without any issues.

why would headers cause driving/reliability issues?

Only when they leak, burn spark plug boots, or get ripped off the car on a speed bump. I had headers on one car that required me to constantly tighten the bolts. They kept backing out of the heads. Didn't matter what I did, the headers were always coming loose...then they burn a gasket and you get to swap header gaskets and put them back together. They had nice (3/8" thick) stainless steel flanges, but still didn't want to stay put. I've burned spark plug boots and picked up a miss. I've had headers on a lot of cars over the years (including a 1977 Chevy C20....lol) and they are almost always more "work" than a vehicle with stock manifolds. There's nothing wrong with running headers, I'm just getting old and cranky and I no longer like stopping in Frostburg, MD because I have a really bad miss climbing the hills in the mountains (8% grades) due to a burned plug wire. I wound up buying a wire and changing it in the parking lot of a parts store to get home. I don't have the patience for that stuff these days...not like I once did.

[landstuhltaylor]

If you burn plug wires on an LS when the coils are right there, you did something wrong.

[CrashTestDummy]

If you burn plug wires on an LS when the coils are right there, you did something wrong.

That was kind of my thought, too. I've so far had decent luck with headers, other than the scraping the speed bump stuff. Two of our LTX cars have long tubes, and I've never put a wrench on them. The Firebird has Stainless Works swap headers, and have been fine for almost a year (that's how long we've had the engine in the car without major work, not because of header problems). Typing that, I guess I need to check bolts on my next trip to the shop. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

But yeah, they are generally more work, especially if there's any work where you need to move them around, and things like starter changes, can sometimes require you to first loosen, or remove a header, which can triple the R&R time, and make work very annoying.

Does anyone know of any back-to-back comparisons of stock manifold vs. shortys vs. long tube HP output? It would be interesting to see, and not some stupid magazine 'shootout' articles where they compare those parts, but casually mention that they swapped out other parts, too, 'since they were there', so you don't know what contributed what.