Anyone here with headers on their car (or potentially considered them)? My question is are they really worth the money? Unfortunately for our cars it is next to impossible to find a pair for less than $2500. What are the performance gains like? My other concern is the sound, I am somewhat worried that the car is going to be too loud. I appreciate the sound of V8, however I want to maintain the ability of going on 2+ road trips. Any thoughts or recommendations?

 

I had headers and an upgraded pulley installed this past weekend. The sound is slightly louder when you floor it (and it sounds good), but overall is still subtle and quiet during regular driving. In fact, I was having my wheels changed yesterday and the guys commented on how quiet the car is when I was pulling in to their bay.

As far as price, my entire setup cost $3,000 (for pulley and headers), but I bought these from a small outfit and I believe I'm only the 3rd or 4th person to buy these from this company. So far it's been running awesome and I have put 500+ miles on the car since installation. Raced an SRT/10 truck yesterday and pulled on him nicely.

 

Darren...did you run a baseline dyno and a post mod dyno run?

 

My post dyno happens today at 1pm CST. Stay tuned.

 

Darren,

Glad to hear about your positive impressions of the headers and that your car is running well with the mods. What's the name of the shop where you purchased them?

 

If you're looking to not spend money and have a quiet car--don't get headers.

If you're looking to make the most obvious, cost effective power gain to the 5.5 motor, get headers---absolute no brainer. Do your homework and compare the stock exhaust manifolds with headers and it's a slam dunk.

I personally have written several posts on the benefits of headers to the W211. There is a slight low rumble and it's a little louder. But what do you want--a quiet car with 550 hp?

Type in HEADER or HEADERS under search engine on the 211 board, get a big cup of coffee, read and learn. There is more info on headers on this site then you can imagine.

 

If you play the mod game, headers are a must

I have owned my car for close to 2 years and installed headers 2 months ago and its worth every $. The car is not that much louder then stock( I have my primary cats removed) unless you hammer it and then OH BABY!

It will make your stock E55 seem slow!

 

Darren,
i'm looking forward to doing a side by side comparison to see how much of a difference your mods made!, we'll try to do this some time tomorrow..my only question is where can we gun it without getting a ticket!?

Ray

 

get a big cup of coffee

Hilarious. But thanks for the heads up...

~ Ian

 

Ray,

I'm looking forward to it tomorrow. I'm hoping to pull on you hard my friend I hope your wife doesn't get embarrased...lol...just kidding!

We can do this on one of the Tollway entrances. Wait til there's no traffic and then we start from a stand still and gun it. Once on the Tollway, we can do some rolling starts from 30 and 60 mph.

Cheers,

Darren