I concur. I'm not a fan of the ball joint job. In college when money was stretched, I'd bang it out. With steady income, I'd prefer to out source it! How much is my free time worth??

I think Chris is worried about the manifold r&r, egr bung etc etc. The Y pipe is no big deal. He'll correct me if I'm wrong.

Mike

 

1) Because I assume it would be very hard for them to fab anything up without the headers being in place and fabbing the pipes ON the truck, judging from all the weird bends and turns on your exhaust job.

2) Becuase the word "fabricate" isn't in my vocabulary. I don't know the first thing about creating auto parts from scratch, don't have a single tool for cutting metal ('cept maybe a sawzall with a metal cutting blade) nor do I have a welder. But most importantly, I don't have the experience and knowhow to do those kinds of things...

 

The manifold r&r doesn't daunt me very much. But he would definitely need to weld the egr flange and o2 bungs on for me, and I would assume the headers would have to be in place to line that up correctly... The y-pipe is also something that I can't do myself... I think you've got it bass akwards Mike

 

this was where the roadside sniffers were mentioned..i've never heard of them before.. but in CA with the smog ***** and the hippies i'm sure its true.
CA already dislikes trucks.. now they are starting in on older vehicles.. soon older vehicles will have to stay right and run 55 mph, or else they will put out too many emissions..I don't mean to badmouth CA..shoot I was born and raised there. but some of the things they do are overkill.

 

Y pipe is cake... egr and o2 bungs are cake as well. You can measure the Y pipe from the pictures Paul sent you.

You'd have it done by now if you were motivated!

 

I'm very skeptical of the roadside sniffer story, for the same reason you're so quick to believe it.

 

We have them here in Texas. They don't go after anyone in particular, but monitor high traffic areas. They were in my county for about 2 months, I figure they are about to change my county to an emissions county.

 

Yeah squandoshus, now step up to the plate an get something done for once. If you keep this up you will become the weak link of the forum. I put up the pics to show that I have done a great deal work, now lets see what you can do.

 

screw the y pipe just run the headers with 1 or 2 feet of piping whatever fits and dump them off under the truck, then fix your stock system so it will be easy to put back on when you need it. hell cut it and add flanges to take it off in pieces if its too hard to take off now

 

Roadside inspections are very true in California. I saw the Sacramento Police Department with a fully equipped mobile inspection station in an area known for a lot of modified vehicles. I've seen this more than once, they cone off the road, and select random cars as you are trying to get from Point A to Point B. It's more for the ricers and that is the area I saw that trailer being towed in. Back in the 90's, they had roadside sniffers that could detect or flag your vehicle as you drove by. Back then I was driving a 1970 Chevelle, and it was then selected to go through IM240 (Chassis Dyno) testing which was unheard of back then. I had to bring my car up to a VERY high standard, which took quite a bit of cash, effort, and parts research. The IM240 was the prototype to the chassis dyno tests performed today, previous to that it was a visual and sniff test only. I got it to pass after a couple of trips there, but at that location, it was a FREE test, but a mandatory one otherwise my registration would be suspended. Lovely.

Also in this area, due to the ricers, Sacramento Police Department, Elk Grove Police Department, Citrius Heights Police Department, California Highway Patrol (perhaps my future job, man it's fun), and Sacramento County Sheriffs Department all perform stops on vehicles they feel could have modified emissions equipment. Special enforcement officers are trained to find non-CARB exempt parts. That is right down to fuel pressure regulators, adjustable cam sprockets, etc - this is on the news fairly frequently in this area. Also to that end, street racing often follows these vehicles which is another problem here.

I smogged my 96 F250 HD 4x4 460 today, and it passed with hardly any measurable emissions at 164k. The guys were blown away at the test station, as I was 10x below the state average and many times that more below the max readings. This is the second test in a year and my truck just runs super clean on both tests, and a bit more so after I did a recent tuneup and timing set swap.

 

There ya go, just install the headers, and use those cherry bombs (or whatever) that mount to the collector and turn down on the other end........done deal and not alot of work. I did this with a Dodge 318 van.....worked well. Cheapo headers that leaked in no time, but thats a different story.

 

heh heh.. find a set of screwed up legal long tube heders and "repair" them with the pipes and bends from yours.. it would be a lot like putting the CARB tag on your headers but that would be sneaky and illegal and i couldn't possibly recommend such a thing..

 

I don't think there's such a thing as legal longtubes in California. It looks like the only legal headers are shorties...

 

I believe one of the responders to this thread said he had long tube headers that were smog legal units for california, please recheck as I have heard of them before as well, but if your budget is around the 250 mark for headers you really won't like those either. I do find that dyno numbers are very interesting the fact that just putting long tube headers on "bone stock" engine will give it almost 2000 more rpm. If it is "bone stock" the cam is hydraulic and the lifters will start colapsing over more than about 5500 rpm. Second with those ford "bone stock" cam specs you would have run into valve float past about 6500 rpm and long tube headers aren't going to help in that regard. Third your dyno chart doesn't start until 2000 rpm, what is going on below that because if you take your drive train numbers to tire rpm and gear chart you will find that 4.10 geared rear end with overdrive tranny is only turning about 2000 rpm at 60mph on the freeway. Back to what is going on below 2000rpm on the dyno chart since you are driving most of the time below 2000rpm. Forth point does your dyno let you choose which style of "shorty" header as there are more than one kind, unequal length, equal length and possible Tri-Y(not sure if considered shorty or long tube).
As for the headers you have now, go the state referee station and talk to them about your spec's sometimes you can get a waiver and your own reference number to the state if you pass the dyno test after authorization but I think you have to go back to a test only every year after that thou (not sure on the last part)
Point, unless you are going to put some high performance internals to this engine is the trouble of long tubes really worth it.

 

I just called exhaust works in belmont, CA. A small but very knowledgeable (and honest) shop. They know of no CARB-certified longtube headers available for these trucks.

That really sucks. I was looking forward to getting a set someday.