If it were tested with headers, what would it be? Mustering up cheap bolt on ponies aint the easiset thing to do. If you increase flow, you increase horsepower.

Drag racing? You mean that I'm the only one on the boad that doesn't view my bird as a drag racing car? They sure the heck weren't designed for their supurb handeling and cornereing ability. Heck, I drag race my Cadillac, and I woop the snot out a lot Firebirds with it--old ones too. You ought to see the looks on their faces!

A side note, I have an 01 Cadillac STS (in stock clothing, it does 14.8 in the quarter) and the factory warrenty just exired--HOT DOG! Time to dink around with it some. The first thing I did was look at the airbox. And under it, there was an air tube, and the air tube causes massive restriction--at least a 25% reduction in cfm draw.

I read about altering the air vent, and some people said it was merely a noise maker. (What they were also doing was cutting a hole in the splash pan. Now that would be a noise maker, and for whatever other reasons they would hack a hold in the splash pan, I cannot say. I do know that it could spell disaster in the rain because you would have a straitht shot of splash into the airbox.) The thing is that the dyno says altering the air vent increases hp/tq however much.

Rather than hacking things up, I simply removed the air horn because even if I hacked it up, it still causes massive restriction where it goes in the air box. The low end gain was incredible, and it sounds the same because the area where the air horn sat still acts as a muffler. I was fortunate enough to have a torrential rain day, so I could water test the car, making sure that the air box didn't pick up water. What I cannot understand is why they would hack up the part, still having massive restriction at the air box's opening, rather than removing it completly. (I guess it's because they cannot think outside of the box and figure out a way to seal the bottom of the box so it doesn't draw engine compartment air. That modification was a no brainer--a big glob of dum-dum--duh!)

My point is that you get a lot of different opinions. To uncover the facts, you must do it and see what happens. As with me removing the air vent as a test, you can install the headers as a test. It's not like it's a car you just picked up last week. You know it, and you will know whether or not the headers will give you signifigant gain. If you're not happy, put the manifolds back on.

Unlike that garbage made by Hooker, those Doug Thorley header sat on the same gaskets from 77 to 87. A year or 2 before replacing them because they ruste out, one header developed a small pinhole leak, requiring a dab of high temperature silicone to shut it up.

If you do your research on Pontiac V8 modifications, you'll find that headers and cam are the best upgrades you can buy for the money. (Whenever I beat a stocker, the canned answer was that if it didn't have headers, it would have been a different story, and they were probally right.)

If you do your homework on velocity and flow, you'll see that headers will give you more power thorughout the full rpm range. When air moves through a tube, it has velocity. Behind that moving column of air, it pulls a vacume, meaning that it drags air along with it. Increased flow automatically eating more feul notwithstanding, that scavenging is free horsepower. As we all know, there isn't a lot of free lunches.

The only downside to your headers is the 3 runner deisgn. I have heard tell that on Pontiac engines it doesn't make that much differenc beteen 3 and 4 runner headers because of the way Pontiacs fire.

When I went from manifolds to the 3 runner design, there was a signifigant low end gain. Once the engine started out it its low end band, I really couldn't tell that much of a gain. As far as gas consumption at cruise speed, it too was a noticable drop, so that free horsepower ain't that free.

Even though the Hookers' design was a pos for the fgf, the 4 runners, contrary to the thing I heard about not making that much of a difference, gave a signifigant edge over the 3 runners.

The thing is that I was so unhappy with the Hookers fit, compared to Thorley's excellent fit, I kinda' wished that I had ol Doug still attached.

The bounus with the 3 runner is that lots of dim-wits looking under the hood will ask if it's a 6? I'd tell'em yes:)

Then we have this little thing called money. Unless it simply overflows over the top of your checking account, you gotta put a plug in it somewhere.

I think that you got out danm cheap. Of course, you get what you pay for, but it's my best guess that you're getting a lot of bang for your buck. The biggest issue is clearance by the p/s box if the car has p/s.

They look just like my Doug Thorley headers. But that's a hard call because just looking like and fitting like can be 2 different things. If they are like my Doug Thorley headers, they will fit perfectly, and the installation should be a breeze.

My opinon is to go for it because the pro-con header clubs, bantering back and forth, have been around before fgfs were made.