Hey ppl im Kyle from Easley SC , i own a 1997 Z-28 and im looking to purchase a set of headers but the ones im looking at ive been told cause too much heat under the hood and melt things, dont want that! The ones im looking at are the dual cat MAC's are any of you running these or has anyone heard of this problem yet? the part number is TF9597, the reason they say it overheats is because of the way the driver side header loops up next to the valve cover so close, but the cat is in the stock location, so i dont see this being a problem do you? i will inclose a pic of them, please reply via my mail or in here, thanks for the help, its needed, and if anyone has any suggestions as to what header to use please tell me, i do want to retain the AIR on my Z .

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wow i used to live in easely south carolina too. a house one side made of brick, and the other half normal. anyways, i have heard of under hood overheating, but ive never heard of anyone telling me they had a serious problem with it. i see you have a hood scoop, so i dont see that being a major issue. well, the choice of headers depends on what power gains you are looking at. short, four into one headers give you high rpm horsepower, but dont really do that much in the low rpm ranges. to get off the line torque and power, you can buy long tube four into ones, or you can get tri-y headers. tri-y headers are basically four-into two-into one headers. there is a lot more of a scavenging effect, so you have better off the line and mid rpm range horsepower. I dont see anything wrong with the ones you are showing. keep your cooling fans on when the motor gets to 150 degrees, and the underhood temps shouldnt go to a dangerous level. get some spark plug wire looms to keep the wires away from the headers, and get high heat plug wires too, and you should be fine. when you purchase something electrical for under your hood, just try to see if you can get it heat treated, but im sure it will do just fine.

 

We had MAC headers on a 98, very similar to these. They were okay but a set of longer tubr ones put down about 8 more RWHP.

I've never had general heating problems under the hood: headers don't add THAT much heat. Generally however, they do run hotter and they are bigger and wider than stock manifolds, so I have had the following problems:
1) Heat on the spark plug and spark plug wires. They make insulating boots for this and you just make sure you route the wires as far as possible from the header.
2) Most headers, certainly almost all long tube headers, go very close to the starter and tend to cook it. We lost one on our 98 recently due to this. Again, there is a starter insulator boot available from Summit Racing or Thunder that fits over the starter and relfects/insulates from the heat.
Other than that, the underhood will be warmer, but who care? Just make sure nothing really delicate or rubber is really near (1/4 inch the headers

 

True, headers can melt plugwires and things like that. You'll want to get jet-hot coated headers. I haven't heard good things about the MAC exhaust, but I'm not sure about their headers. I guess you get what you pay for.

I have a set of uncoated Hooker Long Tubes, and I want to either get them coated, or just get rid of them. I'm not sure of anybody that does heat coating.

Anyway, I'm willing to sell'em. They a.ready have the 02 sensor bungs welded in. I'd keep them if I knew someone out here that did the coating.

 

Here's a link to check for getting your headers coated.

http://www.jet-hot.com/