Last week I had true duals put onto my 97 Lariat 4.6 at the local exhaust shop. I would recommend anyone wanting a good sound out of 281 cubic inches! I Before, I just had on onr Flowmaster forty series clamped in place of the stock muffler. Now I have two forty series on 2.5 pipe with all four cats on it. I finally cut off the dumps beneath the bed, which made it a lot louder inside the cabin as well as outside. I drop it in low, get going to about thirty miles and hour and let off of the gas pedal, and it "gurrgles" almost as good as some of the 4.6 sohc Mustangs out there! As far as power, to me it feels like the truck gained more midrange power than anywhere else; top end and bottom end felt the same. I am thinking about picking up a set of Hedman headers for it. 250 bucks through Jegs... anyone have any experience with shorty headers on the 4.6?

 

Hello meangreen 97;I installed a set of JBAs that I bought right here.The install was easy and the sound was great. I coupled all to a Ravin55 cat back sys.. and had the nices sound you ever heard.I got the cat back from Midas Muffler and had them Install it. with tips all came to around 650 bucks. Header and cat back... good luck OLDGRAY

 

meangrean, did you use 2.5" piping all the way? im waiting to do the same setup. Or did you go 2.5" from the mufflers back?

 

i ran true duals back on my 5.4 with raptor mufflers and it sounds great. running down the highway, you really can't tell a difference, but it did give me more power, haven't really been able to tell on the gas mileage yet. oh, and i still have my cats on.

 

how would straight pipes (no mufflers) sound wiht your setup??

 

Ive had shorty headers on my 97 Lariat for about two years now and love them. They run into true duals with two 40 series flowmasters dumped right before the axle. I have the pacesetter headers and got them from jc whitney. Install took a while but we took quite a few breaks when we got p****D off.

 

I was told that a true dual set-up would probably reduce backpressure too much so you'd lose torque big time. I have a SIDO gibson cat back and frankly it sucks. Slightly lower note, no power increase whatsoever. The flowmaster sounds like the best thing going. I drive offroad, so I cant afford to lose torque. Just myy 2cents

 

MANDRAKE27, I am with you about not wanting to lose any torque, but I was told that if you wanted a dual set-up, just make sure that you have an H-pipe. Lightnings will lose a lot of power to true duals because they need all the backpressure for their blower, but will it hurt the rest of us (even if we have the H-pipe)?

 

Backpressure is a myth. What exhausts need is a high velocity of the gases flow. If you open up the exhaust too much, the flow rate can be the same, but velocity lower. The key is to find out what works the best for a given engine. You can't use true dual 2.5" pipes on a 4.2L. H-pipe's don't do anything. An X-pipe can increase the speed of the gases, though, which is good.

There are people with near stock 5.4L engines running dual 2.5" pipes and have increased power over stock.

 

Gen II Lightnings and S/C HD years start out with factory True Duals as far as post cat dumps go ( no factory Y pipe like a N/A F-150s ).

It is a DI/DO mufler from what I have seen to date, on the research I did on it.

The Bassani "cat-back" for the L removes the DI/DO installs a X pipe, and adds 2 SI/SO mufflers. All un-bolt and re-bolt no fabricating work needed to install the X pipe and the 2 SI/SO mufflers. The X pipe is used to gain flow from the scavenger effects of the heat, and the "pluses" of the xhst flow from the firing order on each side of the engine.

This is a picture of a HD with a "cat-back" system on it. You can see the stock pipe by the color of it, the 2 seperate dumps from the cats are stock.
https://www.f150online.com/galleries...028-46995.jpeg
BTW : Yes it did make a big difference over the Gibson ST cat-bakc system. How much I will not know until the spring when I dyno it again on "normal" gas, rather then the winter blend that is in it now.
I am waiting so I have as much of an Apples to apples comparison as I can, between the 2, rather then the colder air gains and the crappy fuel detraction.