Last weekend I went to upstate NY and installed the Kooks Custom headers with the help of a friend. We installed the headers on my previous Dark Candy Apple Metallic Red Mustang, so the install went faster this time sicne we knew what we were doing and knew all the tricks to cut down the install time. Including the lunch break, it was under 8 hours to take off all the old parts, remove the battery and battery tray, remove all four O2 sensors, unbolt the engine mounts, jack up the engine, take off the starter and remove more engine mount parts, take off the stock manifolds, then installation was reverse of removal.
Due to the tight spaces in the engine bay and around the headers, some of the bolts could only be turned about 1/6 of a turn at a time and we couldn't fit a gear wrench or socket in there.
This time I went with an X pipe instead of an H pipe. After having both, I think the H pipe deffinitely sounds better, but the X pipe supposedly gives more power. The way I've heard it described before when talking about the S197 Mustang is that the H pipe gives more of the classic muscle car sound(like in the chase scene of Bullitt) while the X pipe is higher pitched and sounds more "exotic."
With the SLP Loudmouth mufflers, the car is earsplittingly loud under bridges and in tunnels. I thought my ears were going to bleed when I went through the Lehigh Tunnel on the Northeast extension of the turnpike with my windows down.
