Any real gains w/shorty headers?

[93 Sport]

I see that Pacesetter and Hedman have replacement shorty headers. Anyone have any documented gains using these on an otherwise stock 4.0L '93?
Thanks!

 

[410Fortune]

no gains on a stock engine, your OHV 4.0L wont need headers until its pretty heavily modified, otherwise you wont see any benefits vs the cost and installation.

Also the pacesetter headers are JUNK, not sure about the Heddmans, borla no longer makes them JBA does and they are considered the best (next to Borla)

4.0L mods are expensive for the most part and the gains are minimal
There are some cost effective ones, and they are all discussed here quite often, from mild to wild, jsut plain old cat back and CAI to boosted and built, try doing some searches

 

[Creager]

Borla does make them. I just bought a set straight from borla less then two months ago. <$400 shipped.

 

[410Fortune]

Oh sorry I thought they stopped? Maybe I am confused
okay then Borlas by far have the best quality followed by JBA (I only say this because the JBA ball type flanges are leaky, the Borla slip design is superior)

 

[Jason94sport]

All this is true, although if for some reason you need to take the stock headers off for some other reason, you may as well get performance ones to replace them with. The whole PITA is getting the old stuff off. Once that's done it fairly easy.

 

[Creager]

Oh sorry I thought they stopped? Maybe I am confused
okay then Borlas by far have the best quality followed by JBA (I only say this because the JBA ball type flanges are leaky, the Borla slip design is superior)

I think you might be refeering to like, the cermic coated headers? i dunno, mine are stainless. the JBA's are the cemaric stuff, which i've heard is superior to stainless. Borla only offers the stainless, and from what i understand they used to sell the cemaric... i dunno i might be confusing myself!

But yeah that slip in the pipe is awesome. no sealing issues there too.

 

[93 Sport]

Well, no troubles with the stock stuff so I'll hang on to it for now. I sure like this Explorer, but it suffers horribly from the infamous pinging issue. Gonna make another serious effort at getting it handled, and if I can, then it's time to start playing. If I can't get the pinging handled, then down the road it goes. From all the searching I've done, it seems that some have the trouble while others don't (?)
Thanks guys for all the feedback!

 

[Creager]

pinging = good possibility of carbon buildup. You can get the lower intake off in a few hours, clean everything out (including the intake runners on the heads) with laquor... that should help tremendously.

But it can also be small stuff like dirty MAF, vaccume leaks, improrper spark plug gap. I think you can even try running the gap like .01-.02 shorter/longer for a sooner spark or a effiecent spark. Although it puts more stress on the ignition componets.

 

[93 Sport]

Thanks for the tips! I've searched on here quite a bit and have a long list of things to do to try to get a handle on that pinging. It is really discouraging.

The deal on Borla's stainless headers is smokin' for $368.34 (from their web-site). I imagine that means they will be discontinued soon (like their cat-back was). Even Summit still shows the headers for $559.50.

 

[Jason94sport]

That is mad cheap. I may have to pick up a set for that price.

 

[Creager]

I bought them for that price back in July. Not only that, I was watching that price about a year ago when I was planning for my rebuild. I don’t think they are discontinuing them, otherwise they already would have =P

In otherwords, they have been advertising that price for a while now.

Just keep in mind, if you have a 91-92 truck, you are going to need to get the Y-pipe modified for the (o2 senor to be relocated for the) truck to run right. It will run fine the way it is, but you will run a tad rich, with a little worse gas milage and interesting performance characterisitcs.

Otherwise the headers are designed for the 93-94 EGR stuff