Well do whatever you want, those who have them love them, those who have no headers hate them for some reason, and those who paid $1500 for the same result hate them as well....for obvious reasons.

P.S. The welds are amazing, my father has owned a small block chevy mechanic shop for 30 years and said the welds were impressive.. "like a row of dimes" he said...

 

Im in the process of installing these headers as we speak...so far so good with little issues. SSA makes the race ones that dont have the air tubes already welded in but they give them to you on the side, those are the ones i have. I welded the air tubes in myself, which is a pain cause u have to drill out the header on the car, tack the tube then remove to complete weld but who cares. I slid the drivers side through the bottom, dont have to remove the steering shaft that way and it went in with no issues. The passenger side valve cover has to come off and you can slide that one through the top. message the A/C line over a lil bit and ur good to go. Im waiting for high flow cats so the install isnt complete yet. I tried hooking up the factory cats, it can be done but more of a pain in the *** then its worth, better off getting some high flow cats and calling it a day. but for the money you cant argue the price. Anybody with a lil mechanical know how can put these in the car in your garage(Car dosent even have to be that high in the front on jack stands). Well hopefully ill have mine done in the next day or so, so far i like what i see....ill let u know what happens!

 

I have Kooks on mine and I love them. I looked at thoes headers on flea bay. Looking at the pictures in the post the welds look like art work to me. I was a certified welder for 21 years before a change of careers. Back to headers. I think if someone makes these work for them then thats a good thing. Personally I wanted something that had a track record for the build that I have in mind. I am also running a Borla XR1 and wanted to continue to run that. I am still in the process of fabricating a section from the collectors to the XR1 that will have venturies incorporated in them. I did not like anyones version of an X pipe, because it would not work for me. ( the Borla incorporate an internal X pipe in the resonator )
I love custom fabrication work and my complements to anyone who pulls this off. Personally I'm waiting for some one to get mega HP out of the electric plastic turbo charger

 

Just found this thread....we do header/exhaust installs pretty much every day, 16 bays & 7 lifts. The early headers customers brought in most had fit issues, mainly one collector lower than the other & clearance issues with the bell housing as well as the collector mount tabs not being even close to being able to use. But with some extra work they all could be made to fit OK. The past 6 months or so they have fit much better & we had not seen any that had bad welds ever...all look like they are good quality welds & the end performance gains for stock heads/cam cars are in line w/other lower cost headers (TPIS, etc.). This set was equal to or worse than the worst fit ones we had ever seen. The pass side must have been welded in a bent or loose jig as the collector was tight against the bell housing when the tube flange was bolted tight to the head.....we did not want to hammer on them or use a torch to re-shape them since that would make them impossible to send back. The pass side also sits app 1 1/2" lower at the collector when installed so the fitment of the high flow cats & X-pipe were extremely hard & clearance all around is tight. The collector mount tabs on each (we showed the customer all this when the install took 2 hours longer than usual trying to get them to work) are at least 1 1/2-2"'s off on each side, so there was no way to use them short of cutting them off & making new ones to weld on. I do agree that the "tinny" sound is inherient w/most headers, but I suspect that the amount of tension caused by having to "force fit" so much of it is also contributing to the noise. This car is a 10k mile beauty that is pristine, so we did everything we could to not damage anything, but this set was a bitch to say the least. Again, this pair I suspect either was from the old ill-fitting ones, or was a set that should never have passed final inspection. They are decent bargain headers when they fit right. I would be disapointed as well.

 

mine work great

 

Well, I guess that takes the, inexperienced installer, aspect completely out of the equation.

jttVette02, I hate to hear that about your set of these headers. I can see how you feel now. With such a low mile car, you want everything to be right, not hacked, cut, twisted, etc.

 

Thanks for the backup Tracy. I really appreciate the guys over there at RevX. Tracy's guys were there real late on a Friday night just to get my car done so I could show it off for my Dad the next day at the local car show. He was driving down in his 03 AE. That is customer service right there.

I don't fall into the category of one of the people who paid more for others or that haven't had any experience with them at all. Just putting out my impressions based on my experience with them.

At this point I'm undecided what I want to do with them. If I switch them or whatever I'm out a decent little chunk of money. I guess i'll keep them for now but I didn't really want a set on there that basically needed to be forced in. I am pretty sure the forced fit is causing some unnecessary resonating. I can feel the vibrations at times accelerating coming up through the auto (a4) shifter. That didn't happen before. It isn't terrible, but not desired.

Anyway ... again, really appreciate the guys at RevX. Tracy said bring it in we'll get it done without almost no notice. And even though it turned into a much bigger job than they were expecting, they got it done. I'm not really happy with the headers but no problems at all with RevX that's for sure.

 

Buy Lingenfelter. (period)

 

I may, may, have left a few $$$ on the table but my Supermaxx by Dynatech LTs w/ hfs and x-pipe and dynotune delivered what was promised. Forget the Mustang Dyno numbers the SOTP was AWESOME! No leaks, no other probs and all the sound and heat goes out the back 15 and 21 at the wheels and anyone can feel that!

 

about two years for me also.

 

I was one of the first to have installed. The only issue i have is with a mounting tab breaking. But, my car has been run very hard on nitrous for a long time.

 

I really wonder who here has actually owned headers before...ones that aren't terrible. There's few mods that can **** you off as badly as ill-fitting headers.

When you own good headers you'll know the difference.

 

Ive been cruisin around all day in my vette with the newly installed SSA headers...car sounds absolutely insane! Its nice and crisp through the X-pipe and Z06 TI exhaust...best $300 bones ive ever spent.... x2 for me!

 

FYI Myself and a few other "old timers" with these Headers are pretty sure that those are the original design, and there is nothing wrong with that especially if you've got an earlier model C5. Sxe60 had a very good thread on those listing known problems and solutions.

 

I still think they are well worth the $$ & we could have taken a torch to them & reshaped them. I'm also pretty sure they somehow cam from an earlier batch or were just in the jig wrong.

 

Check out "Ebay header nightmare" threade above.

 

WOW,

 

well so far Iam leaning toward doing this....with the winter months ahead....all my car is going to do is sit in the garage anyways. So if I do run into a fitment situation I can remove them and send it back to get a new one or reshape it to fit....I really want headers but don't want to dish out the cash. Time I have and a place to store it, got that too.

So leaning toward doing this. Just got to hope for the best I guess.

Oh yeh....who has hooked a set of these up to a stock intermediate pipe and stock cats? Do they hook right up?

Thanks
jeff

 

Just don't get them off of the guy selling them from California. These are the ones that are having the fitment issues. I don't know if he has worked out a deal with SSAC to get all of the ones that don't pass QA or what, but I have heard of several issues with his (this is where the ones in this thread came from too).

 

He is the only guy right now selling them there. These seem to be getting mixed reviews. Some say they fit, some say they don't. I emailed him last night, got a quick response back this morning, wanting to know what year corvette I have, my mods, etc.

I replied about half an hour ago, so we wil see what he says.

If I can keep getting fast replies and he seems willing to work with me, I might go this route, just don't want to spend $$$ for a set...but with the winter season here.....my car is going nowhere. So I have plenty of time.