Well guys the time has come...i will finally (hopefully) be putting some longtubes on the T/A I am working with a member from LS1tech who lives not far from me and is selling his SLP LT's w/ catted Y for $350 to me. He sent me 5 pictures of them, and the headers seem to be in decent shape. I'll attach a few at the end of this post...anyways, i just wanted to ask you guys what other stuff i will need to get to install these? I know i will need new gaskets for them, but i saw that SLP sells an istall kit for 139.99 The thing is, these headers are already assembled and ready to be thrown onto the car...so can i buy good gaskets for aftermarket headers for an LS1 car? I would assume so, since people may need to replace gaskets...i just dont know where to get them or how much they will cost me. Any help will be much appreciated!

And WOOHOO for MAYBE a new mod to my car haha!!

Here are a few of the pics that he sent me:

Ryan, actually the best gaskets, believe it or not, are the stock ones. That's what I'm using on my 99. I got a new set of them and put them on when I did the Pacesetters on it. So far no problems even after over 50,000 miles.

Oh okay well i shall go with those then! Did you have to go to the dealer to get them? I found them on this website...10 bucks each.
http://paceperformance.com/index.asp?PageA...mp;ProdID=43747

I'll probably call the dealer just to see how much they charge. If its not much more i'll just get them there and not have to deal with the hassle of ordering them online.

And another question i had...if i wanted to attempt this installation myself, with the help of my father (who used to rebuild cars, so he knows what he's doing), what tools do you think i would need to complete this start-to-finish? There is a tool rental place a few minutes away and they rent just about everything for dirt cheap...so that's probably where i'll go for special tools. Any tips on how to do this installation, please let me hear em!!!

I just got mine from a local dealer since they had them in stock and figuring in the time I would have had to wait if I ordered them along with the shipping/handling charge the cost was just about the same.

I'd never done a set on a newer car until I done my 99 so with your dads' help you should be able to do it just fine. Give yourself at least a full weekend to do them though incase you run into any problems along the line, plus you don't have to rush that way. The main issues you might run into are the bolts for the headers (they don't like to release sometimes and I've seen it before when someone tried to rush where they've had one or two break the head of the bolt off on them); the bolts that hold the area together where the cats are can also be a problem, once again those don't like to break free sometimes; the other bolt you might have issues with is the nut on the bolt on the drivers side under the floor board that helps hold the heat shield in place, that one likes to "stick" too. Just take your time with the ones on the engine itself; with the other ones spray the crap out of them with something like PBlaster and let it sit and do it's job. If you still can't get them to break free, with the ones by the cats, just go ahead and either break them off to get them out or cut them off, since you're going to be replacing them anyway. With the nut by the heat shield, you can use a propane torch to heat the nut up to help get that one off. Just be careful not to strip the bolt that it's attached too otherwise you won't be able to get the nut back on unless you rethread the bolt cause without that nut on there that heat shield makes one heck of a racket when it rattles. (I know that from experience lol )

As for tools, I just used basic tools to do all the work, ie wrenches, sockets, single sided razor blade (to make sure all the old gaskets were off the engine), jack and jack stands, bandaids, antibiotic ointment, etc. I didn't use anything special.

A couple of hints besides the PBlaster: make sure that you get the front end of the car as high in the air as you can (the higher the better in this case) so that you have enough room to get the stock headers out and the new ones in; loosen up the tranny mount and engine mounts helps by giving you that little bit of extra room that you'll need to get the passenger side header in cause you can "push" the engine up a couple of inches to get it; in this case Loctite is your friend - use it on the header bolts. It'll help keep them from backing out on you. Make sure that you "torque" down the header bolts to stock specs in the proper order, that will help seat the headers onto the gaskets and to the engine. Then after 500 miles go back and check them for tightness and retorque them if needed.

Other then that I can't tell you much more then I already have, except to take your time; take it slow; don't rush yourself and to make sure that no small children are near by as you WILL be saying a few choice words along the line, especially when you gouge your knuckles on different things trying to get the bolts/nuts loose and getting the old headers out and the new ones in.

Oh and remember to keep refreshments handy as it'll be a long day. Good Luck!

Wow thanks a lot for the writeup Sue! I know for sure that all the info you gave me will prove useful when i do this project! Some updated news: I actually got a few friends who love to wrench on cars to help me out also. One of my friends has a lift in his garage and all the tools in the world. So we may bring the car over there...i'm still not sure because if it takes longer than planned, i don't want my car to be at his house till we can finish it, i'll feel bad. But we'll have probably 4 people working on it, so hopefully we can get it done pretty quickly without rushing. It's just that more hands makes it WAY easier. I'm excited! This'll be the biggest mod i've done to my car so far (i know it sounds lame cause most of you have done WAAAAY more, but hey...we've all gotta start somewhere haha)

You're welcome Ryan. If you need anything else let me know.

Ooh i have another question for anybody who may know about it. But, i'm going to have to have my car running so it can pass the emissions test in July, and i know that the rear 02's may throw codes with LT's and high flow cats. So my question is if anybody here has gotten a tune JUST to tune out the rear 02's (not a full dyno tune). I hear it costs around $20 but i wanted to see if you all thought that was accurate.

I just got a response from a local tune place. They said they charge 65 just to delete the rear 02's. I'm probably going to do a bit more shopping...does anybody know if this price sounds about right???

Did you find out any info about the price from any place else? I'm just asking cause around me between $60 and $75 is the average price to get the rear O2's deleted out of the system without having any other tuning done. That is unless you know someone personally with tuning software and you can pay them then to tune them out for cheap.

No i haven't been able to get any other prices...mainly due to the problem being that I cannot find any tune shops around me. I have been trying to google it, but i never seem to come up with anything. But unfortunately I don't know anybody who can tune my car personally, so i am probably going to just settle with that price. It's not too bad and it sure beats the price of 02 sims (if you can even find them anymore haha).
Do you think it's possible that, if i get the 02 extensions, that with my high-flow cats I may not throw any codes at all? Or how does that work...?

Extensions won't do anything for you unless you've got o2's to attach them too. All the extensions are are wiring extensions so that the two plug in ends of the wiring can connect. So you'd be best off getting them tuned out unless you can find a set of sims.

One thing I will tell you to get though is a set of Corvette o2 sensors for in the front. Because of where the front o2's will be located in the LTs the stock ones will take alot longer to heat up and more then likely will cause a code for bad front o2's to be thrown. With the Corvette ones you won't have that problem since on the Corvettes the o2's are located farther from the engine from the factory and are made to heat up quicker then our stock ones cause of that.

Well tonight i am going to prep the car (take off the ypipe and PBblast the crap outta all the bolts and let them soak overnight. Thanks Sue for more great advice!! I'll look into getting the front 02's replaced with Vette ones. Do you think i can just tune those out too though along with the rear ones? I do have a few more Q's though: When i leave the 02's out of the new ypipe, do i leave the sensor out and plug up the hole, or do i zip tie the wire somewhere away from the header and just leave the sensor in there? Not sure what to do there. Also, did you have any problems taking off the oil dipstick tube and need to remove the oil filter. I was just curious about this cause i'm not sure if oil will come spilling out if i remove the filter after the engine has been sitting....Some people seem to need to remove it, others don't need to. I just want to make sure i'm ready for all possibilities. haha!

You're welcome for the advice.

Ok, you can't tune out the front o2's. Those are the ones used by the computer for reading your air/fuel ratio so they're kind of important for your car to run correctly.

The rear ones you can tune out cause they're just used by the computer for emissions purposes, nothing else.

If you get the rears tuned out what you do really is up to you. You can take them completely out, wire tie the wire from the harness out of the way and then plug up the hole or you can just leave them in there. Me, if you do get them tuned out, I'd just leave them in there since they're not doing anything, that way you don't have to mess with anything and in the future they'd be there incase you'd ever need to do a visual inspection of your emissions equipment.

With the dipstick tube and the filter, I didn't have to remove either of them but I've helped with a couple of other cars where we did have to remove the filter. Those two you have to sort of play it by ear on the removal part. But if you do have to remove the tube, it isn't that hard. It's just a couple of screws/bolts that hold it in at the bottom and one towards the top of the tube at the back of the engine with a kind of clamp that holds it in place. One thing, if you do have to remove it, be very careful. It's very easy to kink it to the point where the dipstick itself won't go back in and then you'd have to replace it. With the filter, if you have to remove that, just put a small pan under it when you remove it. You should only get a small amount of oil leakage since the majority of the oil should be down in the oil pan itself. But still it's better to be safe then sorry.

But good luck. If you need anything let me know.

Excellent thanks again! I was just curious as to what my options for the 02's were, but that's good to know. I am going to leave them in as they are in case they do a visual, i'll just zip tie the loose end of the wire somewhere up under the car so the non-connected part will be hidden. I'll leave the front 02's stock for now until i get everything done and see if they need to be changed...if they do i'll order them later on and take care of them sometime down the road.
So tonight i was under the car, jacked it way up. I got even a bit more clearance by sticking a good piece of wood between the jack and the chassis of the car and it gave me a few more inches. I have the y-pipe all disconnected except for the 2 bolts holding the passenger side cat connected to the manifold. Those bolts are VERY stubborn. I soaked em in PB blaster and tried and couldn't get them to budge. So i soaked them a few more times, with one drenching soak and am letting the Blaster go to work overnight. I sprayed every single bolt that will need to be removed (AIR, EGR's, Header bolts) with the blaster and i'm letting that stuff sit overnight. I was looking up in the engine bay and it seems like it will be a fairly easy process, just very time consuming. I'm a bit worried about the passenger header, as there doesn't seem to be much room to squeeze it up in there...

I'll fill you in tomorrow on how it goes...probably going to start with my father and friend around 1:00...hope to finish before it gets dark