stone150

iTrader: (2)

It's a bit long, but please stay with me.

For the last 1.5 years my wife and I have have been living in downtown Houston, she walks to work and I drive. I have been using her mustang GT as a DD since it gets better MPG. Because of this my truck has been relegated to sitting under a car cover. It has been driven less then 5K miles in the last 1.5 years.

My wife and I will be moving to a home this summer and my truck will go back to DD duty. Right now I have pacesetter LT's and Y-Pipe on the truck and have had them on for some time. I haven't been entirely happy with them, mainly I don't care for the smell of no-cats. So much so that I had a local exhaust shop install 1 cat, which took care of most of the smell, but that created a new issue. the cat was so close to the floorboard that it created some weird vibrations in the floorboards. Also I think it may be running rich, the insides of the pipes are pitch black. Actually when we lived in an apartment with a garage, I backed in every day and there were two definite black marks on the wall where the exhaust was (like pitch black).

So now that I am looking to DDing the truck again, I want to change something. I would really like to get a new cat back, but don't want to if the exhaust is spouting black crap.
When I had the truck tuned I picked up 20 hp, when I put the headers on and had it tuned again I picked up an additional 25 hp (45 total). So I have gotten used to the power and find it hard to let it go. I would do something else that would net the same hp.
I have thought about going to shortys, but know they won't be worth my wild. I have thought about pulling the CAT off, but then I have to deal with the smell again.
I have have thought about putting the stock manifolds/y-pipe back on, but then I loose 20 hp. But It would be nice to have a truck I can take anywhere to get emissions tested and just overall less to worry about.
I have thought about getting a set of dynomax headers with CATs, but the Idea of spending 1300 right now, sounds not like fun.

Which leads me into my next dilemma, what to do with the truck moving forward. I love my truck, all the things I have done to it and the time I have spent on it, but it does have 160K on the clock and I am sure GM will stop making parts for it in a few years. When I get the Z paid off I will be looking to get something new. The question at hand is if I should sell the truck and get a new truck or pick up a DD and relegate the truck to periodical hauling with the intent to put an LSX in it, but that begs the question of where to store it. If I do put a LSX in it I will want the Pacesetters or dynomax headers, but if I sell it I will want a "stock" exhaust.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?


truck in question:

musclecity85

iTrader: (5)

good looking truck. i would keep the truck since its already paid for. 1st i would also look into getting the truck retuned because black soot usually comes from running to rich, which would explain the smell of raw gas. and as far as headers your right shorties wont yield you much of a gain over stock manifolds. and i doubt gm will stop making parts for these trucks anytime soon so you have nothing to worry about as far as that

stone150

iTrader: (2)

I think first thing first is the Re-Tune, I put the Cat on after the tune and never had it re-tuned, but the black s#*t appeared after that.

My concern about the parts is some interior parts were hard to come by a couple years ago. basically you had to have the dealer paint them.
I had a 94 explorer and apparently after 10 years, ford stops making many of the non-mechanical parts for the cars.