How can I improve the performance of a Northstar exhaust system?
In all honesty the real cork will ultimately be the production exhaust manifolds and the “cross through” pipe that goes from the front bank to the rear bank to route the front bank exhaust rearward. The production parts are packaging-constrained and designed for emissions performance to light the catalytic converter quickly. That being said, they are not THAT bad… But the real hotrod Northstars like CHRFAB is putting into sand rails and such run headers. I would go with 2.5 to 3 inch pipe from the cat rearward. It will have to be a custom bent setup as I don’t know of any avialable sources for the prebent parts. Several people have tried different brand mufflers for low backpressure. Flowmaster, Corsa, etc… You’ll have to do some searching in the archives for their reports on sound quality and noise. They will definitely be louder but probably tolerable. There’s really no practical way to put real exhaust headers on the transverse mounted Northstar engines due to space, packaging a
