octoberlonestar

I’m 17 and today I went to a local muffler shop and asked how much it’d cost to install a flowmaster 40+custom tips on my 2001 F-150 5.4, the guy said $300 or $350 for a flowmaster super 10. How much did y’all pay for your exhaust set up and what do y’all have and is $300-$350 too much?

mbb

OkHeres how much value it adds to your 17 yr old truck;

$0.00

What its worth, is completely up to you. 100%.

I can think of much better things to do with $350. Like maintenance and inevitable repairs that affect reliability.

Red-Ford

I had a Flowmaster 10 series on my '97, I think the muffler its self was like $75-$100, then the guy charged me $100 to weld it on. Pretty good price considering he welded it, and that included the extra pipe as well as him taking the old muffler. I had my mechanic do it because a muffler shop goes by the book at how much they charge, my mechanic charges hourly so it was cheaper to go that way.

Honestly, the 10 series is a legal straight pipe if you're in an area that needs a muffler. You can literally see right through it. If I were you I'd just chop the stock muffler off, go to Autozone and get some exhaust flex tube and exhaust clamps and just straight pipe the truck. It'll be cheaper and sound the same.

02_Black_On_White

Sorry, but this is wrong. I’ve run the flow master 10 and a straight pipe. Not only is there a huge difference in sound but a true straight pipe leaves little to be desired when it comes to engine power.

10thGenScab

Because I'm cheap, I clamped on a $26 Thrush glasspack tube in place of the stock muffler and called it a day. It doesn't matter to me what it sounds like, although I must say with the stock exhaust manifolds and all 4 cats still in place, the 5.4 is a surprisingly quiet V8 to begin with.

Given how tame the truck sounds even with the glasspack, I'd do the same thing all over again if I cared about saving the money. MBB is correct: spend as little as possible and put that money into regular maintenance. The truck will thank you.

white89gt

If you like the welded muffler sound (Like a Flowmaster), Thrush makes a welded muffler for about 30-35 dollars.

techrep

iTrader: (1)

Decent price for that plus a tip and welded up correctly.

Jbrew

Yea that muffler is chambered which is far from a straight pipe. Chambered designs block flow, exhaust gases die in the pipes so performance suffers. Power, torque and mainly "part throttle response" is the trade off for that Flowmaster sound. Those mufflers are all about sound and nothing more. Not even close to a straight pipe.


Performance mufflers are the straight through designs , Magnaflow, Borla, Corsa, Bassani etc are straight through and perform. With these mufflers you can better performance over factory. Can be nice little increase if done correctly. Actually, the set up that netted true gains for 150's and expy's was the 3" cat back from Magnaflow back in the day. The system was dyno proven to plus 10 hp. It consisted of a 3" intermediate pipe (after the Y) into a Maggy Muffler then factory tail pipe.

10thGenScab

Interesting! Was that with long tubes or factory manifolds?

Jbrew

Nope, that was with everything else original, all four cat's original manifold.

Replace the intermediate pipe , that's the pipe just before the mufller. Our original pipe is 2.5". This pipe starts directly behind the Y, were both sides come together. You replace that straight piece of pipe with a 3" piece, then into a Magnaflow or straight thru muffler of your choice. I don't think the tail-pipe matters, well I'm not clear on the tail anyway. It's most likley 3" as well.

This was from Troyer Performance. They closed up shop after the owner took ill (Mike). The system was called a Cat Back for the 97-03 F150/Expedition.

With headers it would be different if you want to run the original tune. With LT's it would be 20/25 gain BUT, the system has to remain a single, pipe diameter can't exceed 2.5", the crossover needs to be replaced with a mandrel bent piece and you need to run one cat on each side. It's really the only way to get that kind of performance out of headers (LT's) UNLESS you tune of course. Yea, if your custom tuning, you can pretty much do anything you want.