Update: Sent pictures and spoke with Mike and then Nick (Owner) at ARH, and they are going to correct the issue and replacing the driver side header which touches the K-Member intermittently on engine start, left and right hand turns and at various drive RPMs. Hopefully this fixes it.

Moral of the story, if you have fitment or quality issues with a product, you have to call the company, else how will they know about the issue, and how would they fix it if they are not given the opportunity?!

 

Sounds like they had good custome service if they worked with ya. I've heard some horro stories on other brands on the ls1 forums

 

^ Yea the buck stops with the owner Nick. After I suggested they offer a polishing service, he also says it's easier to polish headers after they have been run for a while and that polished headers typically change color more significantly then unpolished ones and need to be polished again... Something I wasn't aware of.

 

Yeah that's new to me never heard of that before

 

Well I did my basic tune at Speed Inc. today, they use HP Tuners software.

http://www.speedinc.com/street-mailorder-tuning/

BASIC TUNING FOR ALL YEARS
GEAR (mine is stock)
STAT (mine is stock)
CAM (mine is stock)
REV.LIMITER (raised from stock)

They also remove the torque management which results in firmer transmission shifts which is better for the tranny (noticed this right away driving -- nice!) delete the speed governor, make the fans come on at a lower temperature, and can do things like remove rear O2s, and make it so EVAP codes don't show up, etc.

There is no A/F table changes, but that would be recommended once I go upgrade Heads/Cam/Intake, since a full tune is $500 on the dyno...

They are supposed to be sending me the files for my stock tune backup and the new tune, so I can compare and contrast them if I buy the HP Tuners suite...

 

Nice, at least you dont have egr like i do but thats gettin pulled out along with the air pump. I'm going to order my headers today but decided to go with obx headers, got a ls6 last week so when I get all the changeover parts for that and the headers I'll be tearing the 98 apart.

 

Some pics of the noweeds installed -- I plan to replace that last section of pipe from the y-pipe to the diverter to the muffler w/304 stainless soon, and raise the diverter a bit so it does not bottom out...


Bigger: cgjrn.jpg


Bigger: 77ty3.jpg


Bigger: 5qyrc.jpg


Bigger: ocoku.jpg

 

So after much back and forth with Midwest Muscle Cars, they still did not resolve and identify the header hitting issues I had -- not happy with that experience at all, and they even charged a premium!

Kudos to Nick at ARH who continued to help resolve the problem and arranged to have the car clearanced and checked today at Speed Inc., and no more banging! Apparently the first shop did not take enough material off the driver side K-Member! With this done I am happy again! It pays to work with a shop that does more installs on LSx f-bodies!

So in the end -- the poly motor mounts were NOT required! But NEW motor mounts I do recommend, and installed (OEM rubber in my case)…

Now I just need to address my low hanging diverter a bit -- but Speed helped with that too by adjusting the exhaust.