[Formulajones]

I still have complete Flowmaster kits on the mezzanine that I pulled off cars many years ago. I used to use them in the 80's.

I had the transverse Force II kit on my Firebird (no longer available and replaced with the American Thunder) and the dual muffler setup on my Chevelle.


The transverse kit fit okay on the bird. Took a bit of fiddling to get the muffler positioned so that the tailpipes would fit right. My only complaint with that system is how Flowmaster designed the up and over pipes that go over the rear end to the muffler. They basically entered the top of the muffler under the floor, which limited how far up the muffler would go. Even all the way up I had a problem with the rear end housing hitting those pipes. They clearanced themselves. The other issue is this design negated any option of using factory hangers, which I didn't care for. Otherwise was an okay system.

I switched that car over to the Pypes transverse setup at least 10 years ago. Fitment was much better, no rear end interference and Pypes designed the muffler to have the in and out sections of the pipes to go into the sides of the muffler as they should be. That's how the OEM did it. This also allows the use of the factory hangers back there. I have no real complaints with this system.

On the Chevelle, the dual muffler system is much easier to fit and of course more room to work on an A-body. The Flowmaster kit was fine. I liked the tailpipe fitment and appearance was close to stock, and all factory style hangers could be used. Frankly though I just got sick and tired of the drone so I had a few different mufflers on the system over the years with satisfactory results. I'd probably still have the system on this car today if I had not pumped up the power.
With the jump to a 3" system I decided to go with Dr. Gas for the X and mid pipes, and have switched around several mufflers, now with Dynomax Ultraflows, and the tailpipes are 3" Torque Tech, which mimic the stock pipes and fit excellent around the gas tank. A very nice quiet system with no drone, a pleasure to drive.

I've done similar Pypes systems on Mustangs and other Firebirds and for the price I feel it can't be beat for fitment and quality, and when comparing to other stainless systems on the market like Magnaflow, Bassani, etc... Pypes is hands down the best deal going. As mentioned it's even cheaper than a few of the plain steel aluminized coated systems, including Flowmaster.