Headers or Gears, L99

[Scott@Bjorn3D]

Ok this kind of falls into 2 forums groups so thought I would just put it in the general.

Which one of these upgrades would make a L99 a more fun street car? Most my driving is in town but I do some highway from time to time. Was wondering LP 370 gears or Long Tube Headers? I know headers and tune would give me some more get up and go, but gears may be better and I am not messing with the motor.

Give me your thoughts.

Thanks ahead of time.

[mcdoogle6969]

Your car will feel more torqy with gears and you'll have a blast street driving with them. Headers make the car sound more mean, which can be fun, but almost makes the car feel a little more doggy (which is weird, because you gain power from it).

Go with the gears, you will have way more fun.

[Rcfiddy1]

Getting a good set of gears is kinda hard and can get expensive if the set isn't good. Plus it will KILL your MPGs. Yea, I know we didn't buy these cars for MPGs. Headers will add some power and also sound and make the car a bit lighter. If tuned it can make a world of difference on the L99.

[InfernoSS454]

Originally Posted by Rcfiddy1

Getting a good set of gears is kinda hard and can get expensive if the set isn't good. Plus it will KILL your MPGs. Yea, I know we didn't buy these cars for MPGs. Headers will add some power and also sound and make the car a bit lighter. If tuned it can make a world of difference on the L99.

X2

[daveagogo1]

Headers all day.

[DarkFox1]

Isn't this like comparing $1500 vs $3000 or more?

Gears are good for times and overall off the line but are goin to overall hurt your economy.

For a daily driver, I'd say headers.. plus they're CONSIDERABLY cheaper as far as I know... and way easier to install yourself in the garage.

[cybercoaster]

I have LT Headers and put 3.73 gears on later. The gears made driving crazy, talk about spinning the tires all the time woohoo. However I did just put 555r on and they stick pretty good. It did not make a HUGE difference in MPG. I think RPM runs about 2k at 65mph.

[kr juice 1]

Op thanks for posting this question. I have been wondering what my next mod would be. Appreciate the members feedback. I knew i wanted to go with headers just didn't know for sure to do next.

[brantley847]

A whole lotta mis-information in this thread....Headers and gears are two completely different elements.

Gears: will add an incredible amount of torque, and while it will not show on the dyno.. it will feel like you just threw in something crazy in your car. As soon as I felt one with gears, I was kinda mad at myself for not doing them before the cam.

Downside to gears: One poster mentioned MPG. Not at a terrible rate.. you may lose 1-2 mpg on the highway. City does not seem to be influenced much by it. You will burn through rubber quickly lol... If not broken in properly they can whine. If you want to do it right, you will need to go LPE. LPE is expensive. 1800 in parts/fluid plus install costs.

Headers: Incredible... INCREDIBLE sound. The best thing you can do for sound outside of a cam... Headers do not make the car feel "doggy". You need to re-check your tune. Not only did my car "wake up", I improved 2-3 mpg city after my tune for efficiency by Tampa Tuning. Headers will run you 1400 with cats, 1000 without.. the tune will put you down around 250 for street 500 for dyno. With install you are looking at around the 2k range. Neither are cheap...

Downside to headers: NONE! except losing your warranty because they will require a tune to remove the CEL. The headers to date have been my favorite purchase and that includes the purchase of my cam/LS3 swap.

[Biscuitpie]

Originally Posted by brantley847

A whole lotta mis-information in this thread....Headers and gears are two completely different elements.

Gears: will add an incredible amount of torque, and while it will not show on the dyno.. it will feel like you just threw in something crazy in your car. As soon as I felt one with gears, I was kinda mad at myself for not doing them before the cam.

Downside to gears: One poster mentioned MPG. Not at a terrible rate.. you may lose 1-2 mpg on the highway. City does not seem to be influenced much by it. You will burn through rubber quickly lol... If not broken in properly they can whine. If you want to do it right, you will need to go LPE. LPE is expensive. 1800 in parts/fluid plus install costs.

Headers: Incredible... INCREDIBLE sound. The best thing you can do for sound outside of a cam... Headers do not make the car feel "doggy". You need to re-check your tune. Not only did my car "wake up", I improved 2-3 mpg city after my tune for efficiency by Tampa Tuning. Headers will run you 1400 with cats, 1000 without.. the tune will put you down around 250 for street 500 for dyno. With install you are looking at around the 2k range. Neither are cheap...

Downside to headers: NONE! except losing your warranty because they will require a tune to remove the CEL. The headers to date have been my favorite purchase and that includes the purchase of my cam/LS3 swap.

I bought OBX (haters gonna hate) headers catless and did it myself so around $400 without a tune...

[68vert]

Originally Posted by brantley847

A whole lotta mis-information in this thread....Headers and gears are two completely different elements.

Gears: will add an incredible amount of torque, and while it will not show on the dyno.. it will feel like you just threw in something crazy in your car. As soon as I felt one with gears, I was kinda mad at myself for not doing them before the cam.

Downside to gears: One poster mentioned MPG. Not at a terrible rate.. you may lose 1-2 mpg on the highway. City does not seem to be influenced much by it. You will burn through rubber quickly lol... If not broken in properly they can whine. If you want to do it right, you will need to go LPE. LPE is expensive. 1800 in parts/fluid plus install costs.

Headers: Incredible... INCREDIBLE sound. The best thing you can do for sound outside of a cam... Headers do not make the car feel "doggy". You need to re-check your tune. Not only did my car "wake up", I improved 2-3 mpg city after my tune for efficiency by Tampa Tuning. Headers will run you 1400 with cats, 1000 without.. the tune will put you down around 250 for street 500 for dyno. With install you are looking at around the 2k range. Neither are cheap...

Downside to headers: NONE! except losing your warranty because they will require a tune to remove the CEL. The headers to date have been my favorite purchase and that includes the purchase of my cam/LS3 swap.

+1
In 3 months I will have lived with my L99 having ARH LT's and Richmond 3.73 gears. I have zero complaints. I had both installed at the same time, among disabling the AFM, new tune and other mods. My gas mileage dropped 1 mpg afterwards. (Proven on a 500+ mile trip before and after mods)

You might feel the difference with LT, but you will absolutely feel the gears.
Do both

[E.T.]

I am totally happy with my gears. I have the L99, so I decided to go with the LPE 3.70 gears. They are made by AAM (same company that makes the OEM gears) so they are just like stock, only a better ratio. The grand total for parts, fluids and install was a little shy of $1800. Although the gears don't make your engine produce any more TQ, they multiply the existing TQ, so you get a hell of a lot more TQ through the wheels.

It seems like everyone and their brother on the forum has LT headers. I'm sure the gains are nice, but the problem around here is emissions testing, so I'm not sure I wanna mess around with all that stuff.

The gears are great for driving around town, and 6th gear pulls a lot harder on the highway. I can give it half throttle or less from a stoplight, and the car wants to blast off.

[mpyle007]

Both are great modifications. I love my TSP headers and high flow cats. No emission problems. I do want to do gears once I get more power to the ground properly. Im not into burning rubber, I like to make sure it sticks so I blast forward.

With that said, get more power to the ground by doing suspension mods first. I should have done this when I was stock. Car would be faster right away.

[Fiftydriver]

Originally Posted by Rcfiddy1

Getting a good set of gears is kinda hard and can get expensive if the set isn't good. Plus it will KILL your MPGs. Yea, I know we didn't buy these cars for MPGs. Headers will add some power and also sound and make the car a bit lighter. If tuned it can make a world of difference on the L99.

WHile not cheap, it will not KILL your milage. I am running 3.91s in my L99 and I average 22 mpg on the highway. Before the gears I was getting 24......... I also added a Maggie with the gears so I went from roughly 400 crank HP to around 680 crank HP and lost 2 mpg on the highway at 70 mph cruise speeds.

I would also say that I probably gained 1 mpg in town driving with the lower gears so the claim that it KILLS your milage is simply not accurate. Now if your doing burn outs all the time you will loose milage.

If you want a milage car, I would recommend looking at something else....

Key to getting gears is having them installed properly. I went with a complete JRE differential ready to drop into my car, cost more but got much more then just gears, got the posi upgrade and also the billet main caps as well.

Headers sound cool and I would recommend them as well but they can take away a bit from low end torque because they free up the back pressure on the engine. Not much but I believe that is why most feel their cars feel sluggish after installing headers on a stock engine tune.