Good morning everyone, I just recieved my brand new headers on Sunday and I'm curious as to if anyone has ever heard or tried this brand before. They are Pro Tuning Lab stainless steel full length headers for a 351w. They fit 80-96 ford trucks with the 351w and have 1.5" primaries, 2.5" collectors, 5/16" flanges and come with bolts, gaskets and collector reducers. They're made of 304 stainless and look very nice. I bought them brand new on their site for $188 (w/$10 off coupon), which I think is a hell of a deal. I can't wait to try them on. If anyone has ever heard or tried these, how did you like or not like them?

 

Sounds to good to be true for stainless steel. Let us know how you like them once they are on.

 

Think thats the brand this guy bought that was stainless and had us put on at work things leaked and didnt fit for crap.

 

Rusty, would you be able to find out for me?

 

I would have to ask the guy if he comes in today he stops by randomly but if he stops buy I can ask. I know he bought them off ebay for his '92.

 

FWIW, I bought a "catback" system from them for my turbo Subaru back about 2014. The pipes and flanges are good quality, but the muffler hanger brackets were a bit off from centering the tips in the bumper cutout. I used screw type hose clamps to tighten the rubber hangers to move the tips around. They called them mufflers... but you could see straight through them. They weren't very quiet. It was hard to talk to the passenger in the car on the highway.

 

304 Stainless will surface rust. Don't ask me how I know.

 

Thats one thing I am concerned about the stainless magnaflow muffler I have for my truck it mimics the OE round muffler but its their 3 chamber XL model. Im hopeful the stainless doesnt rot out or rust cause I also am getting the stainless Y pipe from magnaflow as well.

 

When I say surface rust I mean just the surface. My JBA shorty headers are 304 stainless and have rusted on the surface but otherwise held up very well. JBA told me, when i called them about it, that 304 stainless will rust on the surface but not otherwise. The 400 series stainless is much more expensive but doesn't surface rust.

 

Well thats good, I dont mind surface rust I am not building a show truck, I wanted something that would out last the life of the truck so I dont have to do the exhaust again lol

 

That same brand part sells from a lot of different vendors, usually on eBay and Amazon. I think that's the same manufacturer of the header I have. You can tell by the photos. The header I got for my 83 F-100 300 I6 fit fine, no exhaust leaks or the like.

 

Got a link to that 300 header?

 

Here you go

Mine was from Amazon, but looks identical. Fit kind of close to the transmission and the inner pipe points at the trans cross-member. But my exhaust guy made it work fine. Plenty of PMGR starter clearance once installed, and the starter can be installed with it in place, but you do have to pull on the header pipe while shoving it fairly hard to fit between oil pan and header. Nothing too bad.

 

I will let you all know how I make out with these headers, it might be a little while before I put them on. I'm in the process of getting the truck ready to be run through inspection and put on the road (new tires, rebuilding the carb, replacing the valve cover and oil pan gaskets etc.) The single exhaust that's on it now as crude as it looks should be good enough to get it through inspection before I can start tackling that. I'm still too in the process of figuring out how I want to go about doing the rest of my exhaust on the more affordable side. Even with me having headers and buying my own mufflers and tips, exhaust shops around my area are wanting at least $500 to do it which I think is kind of high. If I can at least find dual tailpipes that exit out each corner (45ed) then I could probably plum the rest up myself. Off topic a little lol, but if anyone is looking for a good deal on tires for your truck, Walmart.com has some really good prices. I bought some Cooper Discover A/T All Season 265/75r16s for $115 each with free shipping. Just thought I would pass the word along to help anyone. Have a good day everyone

 

That sounds really high to me, but I may just be lucky. I have a local guy that does all of my exhaust work. Now, he's probably not your guy if you need show car level quality, but for routine exhaust work, he rocks. Heck, he may be able to do some beautiful work, my vehicles just don't deserve it. They're function>form cars.

For my 83 F-100, he made the connectors for the header (two parts), routed it carefully around the trans crossmember, made a y-pipe to join them, ran a single pipe back, installed a muffler he provided, and angled it out the side of the truck (did not route over the axle). The only thing I had was the exhaust header, he provided everything else. I just took it to him and told him I wanted it nice and quiet. Cost me about $200, parts and labor. That's pretty close to what yours should be imo.

For my 1995 Mustang, I provided the headers, some V band clamps, some 3" pipe with mandrel bends (universal kit from Summit with X pipe and prebent tubes), two turndowns, and the Dynamax mufflers. He cut off the ball-style header flanges, installed the V Band clamps, had to do more custom bends to clear my torque arm, trans mount, all of that, and it was also about $200 in labor. I think I might have $900 total in my exhaust, but the ceramic coated swap headers were $550 of that. And that was a much harder install than yours should be.




I should mention that we have a very well-known shop in town that wanted to charge me $1000+ to do the same work (they were going to provide Dynamax Bullets, 3" pipe, and the X pipe, but I was still providing headers. So it still was gonna be twice as much.