1995 Z71 PU - Headers and Dual Exhaust?

[L31MaxExpress]

Did you mock things up with the clamps or did the clamps stay and the muffler shop did the rest?

Some of it is welded and some is still clamped. Makes it easier to replace components if needed. The cats and muffler are clamped into place. The rest is welded. If needed in the furture, I can unbolt the collectors, remove the pipes from the cats, if say the TH400 had to come out of it. I had the exhaust in place minus the tailpipes. The tailpipes were made by altering early 70s GM A-body Chevelle pipes.

 

[Erik the Awful]

That a nice clean looking job. Not having a transfer case really simplifies thing!

Can you give me a quick explanation on the X pipe. Back in the day I knew a couple guys who ran H pipes right behind the collectors. But never really paid much attention to them.

And converters...looks like everyone still hanging them on older stuff?!?!

Once my 95 is good enough to be an everyday driver, I will start on my 71 C10...no rules to worry about breaking on that boy!

Thanks! It's all 2.5" after the collector, and people mistake my truck for a big block because of the Cherry Bomb Salute mufflers. Honestly, it's a bit too loud and I want to extend the pipes to the rear bumper.

Not too long after the popularization of H pipes, somebody said, "that looks like it's disruptive to the flow of exhaust, I'm gonna invent something smoother" and X pipes came to be. Dyno tests have revealed that H pipes favor torque and a deeper tone while X pipes favor horsepower and a raspy tone. That didn't play out on my truck. It's all bass rumble and torque.

Yup, I put converters on. I believe in being a good neighbor. So far, of the four GMT400s I've bought, only my pristine '99 Suburban had the factory cats in place.

 

[CaptnC]

https://www.holley.com/blog/post/x-pipe_vs_h-pipe_exhaust_which_is_better_/#:~:text=In%20contrast%20to%20an%20H,further%20up%20the%20RPM%20range.

Here is a very interesting read on X-pipes and H-pipes. I never took the time to look it up but being more of an old school car enthusiast, I may go with the H-pipes and not the X-pipe.

The original muscle car sound is more pleasing to my deaf ass! I'm not sure I can hear the high pitch frequency everyone wants from X-pipe.

 

[CaptnC]

Ahhhh, the ol' Cherry Bomb! Back in the 70's a lot of guys put them on their trucks. I'm not sure exactly how small of a pipe they used but it sounded horrible IMO, but a ton of guys used them.

During that time I had a pair of Thrust mufflers on my 68 RS Camero. When I bought the car it had a cracked base plate on the carburetor. It dumped a bunch of fuel in those mufflers for the first few month I owned the car. They were both on the collectors with no pipe behind them.

It's a wonder I didn't catch that car on fire. The flames coming out of those muffler during deceleration were quite impressive!
When I rebuilt that motor in 1978, 327cid I changed the heads, intake and pistons. I also swapped out the 3 speed with 4 speed from a Vett. The original rear end didn't last very long so I put rear end out of a 1969 SS Camero.

When I dropped the mufflers on Fridays for street races during the weekend...it's no wonder I'm so hard of hearing now. You couldn't scream at your bubby and him hear you when I had my foot in it!

Ahhh, those were the days!

My car got a write up in the high school news paper and that was the only picture I have of it...it was a bad boy!

M50 15 tires normally lasted 6 months and the clutch about 9 months!

 

[CaptnC]

Oh...

Carrying on about the past I forgot what I was really wanting to say.

My, new to me, 1995 Z71 has a what looks like the old Cheery Bomb except it's 3' or so long and has a diameter similar (3.5" to 4") to what I seen back in the day. The truck has a 2.5" stock configuration exhaust with that muffler.

While the engine runs very its sluggish, my wife's 08 Toyota Corolla could beat it in a ¼ mile race! It's not very loud and doesn't have that sound so common back in the day.

So I'm not sure what brand the muffler is!?!?!

 

[Erik the Awful]

Cherry Bomb Salutes are not the Cherry Bomb glasspacks of old. They're a straight-through case muffler that gives a fair bit of noise reduction while retaining most of your horsepower. Engine Masters did a $40 muffler shootout video a few years back, and most of the "turbo" and "Flowmaster-style" mufflers killed 50-60 hp. The Salutes killed 2 hp. I don't know why I'm missing the dB numbers at idle for the Salutes and open headers, and I don't have a subscription to the shows any more (Discovery+ dorked up the service and doubled the price).

Muffler​	HP​	DB @ idle​	DB @ Peak​	Price​
Summit Turbo​	546.4​	64.8​	91.1​	32.99​
Summit Welded​	545.6​	63.4​	90.6​	32.99​
Walker Turbo​	540.4​	64.5​	89.3​	26.99​
Cherry Bomb Turbo​	538.9​	61.9​	87.4​	27.99​
Hush Thrush​	530.3​	63.3​	87.6​	36.99​
Thrush Turbo​	529.6​	62.3​	88.3​	31.97​
Cherry Bomb Pro​	548.6​	66.3​	95.3​	33.99​
Rumble Welded Chambered​	546.0​	65.1​	96.4​	32.12​
Summit Two Chamber​	544.1​	67.3​	91.6​	29.99​
Thrush Welded Chambered​	542.0​	67.5​	92.6​	39.99​
Cherry Bomb Salute​	605.1​	​	97.8​	​
Open Header​	607.0​	​	​	​

 

[CaptnC]

@Erik the Awful
Thanks a ton for all the info on those mufflers.

I really didn't think the "glass packs" from back in the day existed anymore. IMO they sounded horrible. It's been a long time since I've heard their sound.

I plan to dig through you list to see if anyone has come up with idea of making a dual in/out but still retain individual chambers like two mufflers would.

It seems logical with the tight spaces under cars today that someone would have done this by now.

I wanted to do a true dual on my 1985 Z-28 Camero (lost that bad boy to a divorce) but there was no room under the car for it. The 4x4 causes the same challenges but to a lesser degree.

 

[CaptnC]

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you will not believe this but this is the muffler on on truck currently!

26" long 2.5 in and out!

Sure glad it doesn't make the same noise as the glass packs did back in the day. I looked inside of it while I had the exhaust off when I did the transmission.

Free flow but it's no where near as loud as I want it to be.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I've heard of people cutting open old blown-out glasspacks and packing them with stainless steel wool. To me, that's a lot of work when I can just buy the Salutes.

 

[Sean Buick 76]

I’m pretty happy with this 3.5” stainless exhaust I just had installed. It used a flowmaster that is a magnaflow copy. I used mandrel bends and paid a pro to cut, weld and fit it. I normally do duals except this one is getting a single turbocharger so it makes more sense to go single.