Ok i have a chance to get my hands on a free y pipe and cat back of a firebird t/a. the question i have is the y pipe is made by hooker, does that mean i have to buy hooker headers. and do i need to get ones with a.i.r.? because my budddy told me i should just take the a.i.r. off any ways. will taking th a.i.r. off hurt any thing or not?

thanks mike

 

If the headers and stuff are free go ahead and get them. But I don't know if your state has emissions tests...if it does you have to keep the E.G.R. on them if you don't you will fail the test. I am not sure if you have to buy Hooker headers or not but my GUESS would be you don't. Just take your headers an Y pipe to a good mufler shop and they should be able to hook that up for you. If you take the E.G.R. off (same thing as A.I.R.) it won't hurt anything it will just throw some check engine codes that you can't get rid of.

 

A.I.R. and EGR are very different things. Technically you don't need either of them, more than likely the car would be able to pass. The A.I.R. is a system that pumps air down into the cats upon startup to help early catalization to reduce polutants on startup. EGR really isn't something that you should need to remove because it helps emissions and doesn't hamper performance at all because the EGR vavle is closed at WOT. As far as the Hooker headers, it depends on what kind of Y pipe it is, it could be make for either shorty or Long Tube headers. If it's made for shorties, theoretically you can put any shorty, or even keep the stock manifolds and it should bolt right up, if it's made for LT headers, I'd suggest getting them from Hooker to make sure that you have a good fit. You may have a slight issue finding a LT header from Hooker that has EGR and A.I.R. feeds, I know I had the issue, it could take some custom fabrication to get all the stuff onto them that you need.

 

it is for lt headers. i wouldn't take off the egr. and what kind of trouble will i have if i dont have the cats any more?

 

If you mean that your car doesn't have cats. Then I wouldn't worry about keeping the EGR. Because you would fail an emissions test anyways. If you don't have to worry about emissions get rid of that stuff it doesn't help you if you keep it or hurt you if you get rid of it.

 

Even if you go catless, you can go get an o2 sensor bypass. to negate your check engine light. as for the A.I.R. I have no Idead I was hoping someone would have answers as to how to run it without the system.
As for the headers - If the Y pipe is for shorty headers there's plenty people who make a Header for that. Just match up the pipe diameters. If it's for long tube headers same deal.
Me personally I'd stick with the same headers as the Y-Pipe for a correct fit.

 

Depending on the year of the car it may or may not have O2 sensors after the cats, if it's '96 or later it does, in which case you can get O2 sims, but you'll still want O2 bungs in the collector so you can get a good reading so your car runs like it should. You can run the car without the A.I.R. system, it won't hurt anything.

 

I have headers and straight pipes (and glasspacks dumped at the rear axle) and nothing else, with O2 simulators. Runs fine and no codes.