I have a 69 firebird 400 with a few mods. Coils, Carb and manifold. I am looking for a really good system that does not require 8-10 hours welding that you guys have talked about(the flowmaster system). Some welding will be fine but 8-10 hours is a little much for me.

PhantomCanes,
The flowmaster kit is a supper kit. It took me 8+ hours from the time I opened the boxes, laid out the parts, jacked up the hole car off the ground 18"+. I took my time but im very picky. The kit comes with claps so you dont even have to weld anything. I just thought it looks cleaner if its all welded. When installed it looks awsome. The kit could easily be installed in 4 hours. Let us know what you decide. Joe

OK thank you. I assumed it was about 8-10 hours of welding. I am not up for being on the ground for that long.

I ordered the Flomaster 17139 kit for my Firebird from Summit, and it arrived this afternoon.

It took us only 4 hours to get the whole system completely installed under the car. We started around 9pm tonight, and finished a little after 1am.

Let me tell you how impressed I was with this kit. It came with EVERYTHING that I needed. All tubes, clamps, hangers, brackets, bolts, washers, and very detailed instructions on how to put it all together.

Everything fit perfectly, the FIRST try.

In regards to welding, yes you will have to do some. The kit comes with a 3" to 2.5 reducer pipe, and you will need to weld the collector flange plate onto the end of the 3" tube section to create your reducer pipe to bolt onto your headers. Also, you might want to go ahead and weld any number of the 8 clamp point that exist on the system. I am personally going to back tomorrow and weld the 2 places on each side that have clamps that go between the header and the muffler. I am going to leave the joints at the mufflers with the clamps, in case I ever need to replace anything with this kit.

you can go to any muffler shop and have a flowmaster system built for it.but why put mufflers on it?all you need is a 10,000 horsepower engine and you can go from 0 to dead in 2 seconds flat

"phantom", my car came w a very easy system (former owner installed), two straight pipes w glass paks...not too loud,sound good and is easy ,,cheap...

I third the nods to Flowmaster. I've had the Force II system w/ the crossflow muffler on my convert for over 7 years and it's worked well. I had to weld an "s" shaped adapter pipe (between the headers and exhaust) to clear the boxed frame on my convertible but other than that it went well.

The one complaint I have is the flowmasters resonate at low idle which can be annoying at times. The only time I like the resonating noise is when the kids pull up to me at stoplights with their subwoofers thumping and the 'ol 455 idle drowns out their music (smile).

Bjorn, thats what I have now. It stops right under the front seats. It was put on by the previous owner also. It is so loud on the Streets you get a headache. the whole car rattles!!

How about the Performance Years 2 1/2" Pypes mandrel bent system with x-pipe and Super Turbo mufflers? I put that on my 69 conv in an afternoon - no welding. (I don't use the x-brace though and modification to that would be neccessary by adding spacers). The sound is mellow at idle and cruise and mechanical music when accelerating hard. Love it.

Phantom, mine go all the way back and end w/ 72 style splitters ...no rattle (they are supported where normally the mufflers would be..mine are not loud ...not any more than my sons flowmasters on his 350 chevy...maybe its less loud because of the longer pipes?