First off, thank you to my beautiful daughters for the best Father’s Day ever! They really aren’t sure what they bought me other than parts that made the Corvette “embarrassing loud” right now. It’s just open headers for now until my exhaust appointment next Saturday morning.

After a bit of research and becoming victim of a scam by a slug here in the classifieds, thank goodness for PayPal, I chose to buy new. It’s not that there aren’t good used headers out there, I just didn’t want to deal with the hassle after almost getting burned.

I went with Hinson brand headers and couldn’t be happier. The finish looks nice for now and fit perfectly having to make ZERO modifications to the headers or to the car. I have what used to be a Bassani cat-back but since I’m not running cats anymore we will just call it a Bassani exhaust. The reason I bring up the rest of the exhaust is because of the way it’s designed. Where the factory intermediate pipe “x” section went is where the Bassani muffler fits. It has the crossover pipe built in for a very unique sound. There is not a header manufacturer who makes a x or h pipe that would bolt to my exhaust except for Billy Boat. After looking at the Billy Boat and contacting a vendor about them I decided to go a different route. The vendor was nice enough but wasn’t listening to my needs. He kept asking me over and over why I wanted the Billy Boats. That didn’t give me a good feeling about the headers or the vendor. Anyway, moving on...

I contacted Brian Hinson of Hinson Motorsports. It was through email and he was extremely helpful. When I explained what I had he sent me links to exactly what I needed and rather than try to sell me his intermediate pipe sent me to an exhaust shop to finish things off.

I ordered the coated headers (Black), the spark plug wire heat sleeves and o2 sensor extensions. All in was under $700 to Hinson. I then contacted DEI and ordered their C6 tunnel plate heat shield with the side strips. That was right at $200. I’m in the auto repair business and my GM “parts guy” Keith sold me a new set of spark plug wires, new manifold bolts, oxygen sensors and manifold gaskets. He gave me his cost on those items and I think it was around $300. I made a couple of trips to O’reilly this weekend and spent another $100ish on a few more heat protection items. I have a feeling that my exhaust shop trip will be somewhere around $200 but that’s just a guess at this point. So, if you’re keeping count I’m gonna be around $1500 before the tune.

Knowing that I am getting a tune, I wanted to go ahead and get a cold air/ram air kit and a vendor on here had a sweet deal on a Vararam kit so I jumped on it. $350 shipped and I feel good about it. It cleaned up the engine bay a lot as I wasn’t a fan of the look that the factory air box had. I like the Z06 box without the silencer but felt like if I bought this that there wouldn’t be anything left on the table power-wise.

On to the project...

I did everything at my house, on the garage floor with jack stands. The hardest 2 parts of the job were removing the original spark plug wires and routing the oxygen sensor extensions. Mistakes that I made, the very first thing that should be done with all of the old parts out of the way is to figure out exactly how you’re going to run the oxygen sensor extensions. I chose to do it last so the passenger side header (the easier one thank goodness) had to come back off. I also forgot to remove the old rear oxygen sensors before I put the headers on. There is no way to get the passenger side rear oxygen sensor off that I can see with the header installed. Another “dammit” moment.

I first want want to say that I’ve been a Mustang guy all
my life and putting headers on Mustangs with mod-motors involves dropping the cradle. It’s a minimum 8-10 hour job, on a lift, with help and an alignment to follow. The C6 appears to be built, straight from GM with long tube headers in mind. This job was so easy that my wife kept asking me what I was laughing at. I was laughing because it was SO EASY and everything fit perfectly. I wasn’t even too upset when I learned I had to take them back off again to handle the O2 extensions.

So done for now now until my exhaust appointment next weekend. After that a good tune which should put some bigger smiles on my face. I’m hoping that the cam swap down the road will go as smoothly as this exhaust job.

 

Stock parts off

New Vararam ram air kit


Something’s missing!

My work space

Hinson coated 1 7/8 headers

Very pleased with the quaulity

Very discreet

Almost looks like it shoulda come this way!

I did some temporary turndowns until I can get to the exhaust shop. Didn’t want to create too much heat under the car on the drive to the exhaust shop. My neighbors will hate me...

Perfect fit, zero modifications. Thank you Hinson Motorsports for supplying me with such an outstanding product!

 

Congrats on your great Father's Day gift. It's great when things go as they should, glad it all fit and worked out for ya.
Dont throw your cats out, sell them or take them to a recycle center they have palladium in them. It's worth around 1300 bucks an once just like Gold, recycle center won't give you that of course since they are a middle man but you should be able to get a couple bucks for them.
Wait till you get a tune these LS motors are awesome then........

Speed Safe....

 

Great read since this is my project for later this summer!