Good lord! Let the girl get settled in before you start hitting on her! hahahaha, Ohhh I live here and ohh let's go wheeling hahaha.
Serious, this is a good bunch of folks. Just get these guy's in line LOL. Any problem you have I'm sure you can find the answer here.
As for your exhaust you need to find some C.A.R.B. legal headers and the problem here is fit. I tried to run a set of Dynomax sold by Jegs under the Cyclone name and they hit the front drive shaft on my wifes 79 (now don't go hitting on my wife guy's). Her truck was still stock suspension and it hit just sitting level. Your truck I think will also have a smog pump so to get it past the smog Nazi's that has to stay operational. Waxer (and he's married with 3 kids so won't be hitting on you hahaha) had some dealing with the Nazi's and might be a good source for information as to what has to stay operational. His truck is old enough that it didn't have a pump but he had some issues about EGR and got pretty versed in what has to be there. As for Cat's. If you have the brick style Cat (and probably do since your truck is late 80's) it is pretty free flowing. Cheap wise you might be able to get a Cat off a 90's Vett in the junk yard and get best bang for the buck. I think your laws will keep you stuck to a single converter and the issue here is size. CATCO make some of the least restrictive cats on the cheap side but in limited sizes. I can get away with Dual cats and got cat's for $50 each that are rated up to 4.0 Since I was only running half the engine through each cat I was well within it's ratting. Like I said though you may have a fairly good cat already. the restrictive cats were the style with the pellets and I'm pretty sure that was long gone by the time your truck was built.
Now the size of the exhaust has to do with the size the exhaust manifold/header can handle. The bigger the diameter the better for top end but it moves your Torq curve up. same goes for headers...the longer and the biger the primary tubes (tube from head to flange where it joins the other) the better for top end and the worse for low end.
You drive a Truck and while HP is what get you to top speed it's the Torq that gets that truck moving off the line. I would stay with a short tube header and a conservative exhaust diameter. That will get you the best mid RPM performance and off the line power and that's where your truck will be happiest and get you decent gas milage. If you can get away with true duals I would say a 2-2.25 diameter exhaust pipes would be good. A H pipe would help but H Pipes need to be as close to the headers as possible and as short as possible. On a 4x4 Truck there just isn't a good place for it. If you have to go single exhuast and Cat then try to get 2 inch from manifolds to a 2 into 1 Cat and then run a 3 inch diameter pipe from the cat to the rear.
The key here is to do some research and get the right stuff that will pass your very strict emmissions. It would get very expensive to slap some stuff on that somebody that wasn't versed in CAL emissions told you to get and then have the Nazi's fail your truck and cause you to have to redo it and wast lots of cash. Make sure it has CARB EO registration number. I hear they look for that on Aftermarket manifolds.
Diging it in the dirt with my K5's
Grim-Reaper
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://grimsk5s.coloradok5.com/>http://grimsk5s.coloradok5.com/</A>
And welcome to the board!!!
