I'm looking to improve both performance and give the girl a better sound. I've looked into straight pipes, but from what I've heard this is a bad idea, both legally and for the engine. I'm thinking about a cat back set up. Any advice?
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Straight pipes would be a good track setup, but wouldn’t be street legal considering the age of the vehicle (and expect plenty of police attention with them!) A good set of flowmasters will move plenty enough air for anything but a pure dedicated track monster. I know in my state, the cutoff year is something like 1983… anything 83 or newer must have working mufflers… anything older, your good to go.
A new cat-back system would be a great start, and is readily available for 5.0 t-birds. Throw in some high flow cats, and try to find some headers. I haven’t looked for t-bird headers in ages, but I’m sure someone out there has em… if not, a decent exhaust shop or performance shop can custom weld anything you ask for.
Of course if your engine is moving this much air on the exhaust side, you might as well replace the cheesy stock air cleaner with a nice high flow cold air intake. You know all those “claimed” numbers that muffler salesmen like to throw around, like “this will boost your output by 20HP!!”… well, not without a good cold air intake, it won’t.
And if you have a couple hundred bucks more after all that, find a good performance chip to reprogram the engine computer. They’re also readily available for your year t-bird, and a good one will be well worth the money.
Get new headers and a flowmaster exhaust… you won’t be disappointed
dual exhaust from motor back.