I have a 96 bronco 351w and want to get rid of the stock exhaust I want to get dual exhaust but can only find kits for sale for single exit. But my brother in laws brother works at tuffy auto center and can do the exhaust for me so I will probably go that route. But what would be some advantages and or disadvantages of keeping the stock y pipe and then running a cat back com pared to just buying a set of headers and running true duals all the way back with no cat but with a flowmaster on each side? I know nothing about exhaust really so any help and info would be appreciated.

 

Running exhaust down the driver's side of a Bronco is tough because of the t-case and crossmember. It's actually easier to run both pipes down the passenger side if you do duals. A good set of shorty headers with a high flow y-pipe, high flow cat, and good cat-back system will not only be emission legal, but will flow about the same as a dual system anyway.
Even if you don't have emission testing in your area, it is against federal law to remove the cat(s) from your vehicle. Even if you don't care about it being legal, think about if you ever decide to sell it.
Oops, just saw it was a '96. OBDII computer systems like yours don't take kindly to removing the cats anyway.

 

mrwizard has it right...ODBII systems are picky about the emmissions so much so that they have, count 'em, THREE O2 sensors. True duals without a crossover pipe in that system will be worse still. Dual exhaust does little for the performance compared to the idea of a good highflow cat and cat-back system. While too much back pressure reduces engine performance....too little will have the same effect. Try running open headers (if you have a good set of earplugs) for a few days and watch your fuel economy go through the floor. You are far better off with a well made, well tuned system researched and developed specifically for your vehicle. Flowmaster, IMHO does NONE of this. They make a few dozen different configurations that "will work". But even then we are only talking about the muffler(s). What about the rest of the system? The Y-pipe, the catalytic converter(s) the manifolds/headers. All are contributing factors. Well tuned headers will scavenge exhaust gases rather well. A high-flow cat. will allow those gases through very efficiently as will an equivalent muffler. BUT, if the scavenged exhaust must squeeze down into the stock Y-pipe before it gets to the cat. or muffler, you are still creating the bottleneck and increased backpressure.

Just an opinion. Many would probably argue the validity of the "Flushmaster" comment but then thats their opinion.

 

I agree concerning Flowmasters..I personally think Flow-Tech Raptors are better, and sound more throatier than the others.

I would suggest a H-pipe instead of a Y-pipe setup. A good exhaust man can fix you up. Just don't make the mistake of running the pipes straight out the back.