Dak's don't run so good with open headers.....Ever since my near loss
experience with the Typhoon (SUV) last week, I've been conjuring up ways to go
faster. Well, I want to go with the MP cam and an M1, but my wallet (and the
ole' lady) weren't real happy about that. So, I decided a less expensive
approach would be a little easier to deal with, and that it was time to
finally lose the cat. I've got DT headers and 3" cat back, but was still
running the stock cat. I had a piece of 3" pipe bent to fit. My plan was to
put a collector at the inlet of the muffler, and one at the end of the pipe
that replaced the cat. This way, I can bolt the cat back in anytime. My parts
from Summit got in this afternoon, and I was scrambling after working late to
piece it all together. It was a beautiful night. Just a little chill in the
air; probably 15 degrees cooler than it's been for a long while. I'm looking
forward to my best times ever. Everything was fine until I launched on my
first run. Man did the exhaust get loud! The end of the pipe up by the
header collector requires a fairly quick bend, so the flare to go over the
collector ended up kinda short. It seems that in my rush to get to the track,
I didn't catch quite enough "meat" with the front pipe clamp (holding pipe
onto header collector), and the pipe came off. (bury head in sand like an
idiot). There was no way I was gonna get the pipe to stay back on at the
track, so I took it off. I figured I'd lose some power at the low end, but
didn't know how much. I got a lot of looks driving through the pits with a
relatively stock looking truck with the open headers. The truck was obviously
down on torque. It launched OK, but I really noticed a loss of power at the
low end of 3rd and 4th gear. The top end, above 4800 rpm, picked up but not
enough to compensate for the loss at the low end. I made a couple of runs.
Top speed was up some (91 vs previous best of 90.3), but the weather sure was
helping that. ET's were nothing to write home about. Tomorrow I fire up the
MIG welder and fix the pipe right. Hopefully next week will be better.....Oh
yeah, the drive home was interesting.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:10:32 EDT