Toadster, I notice you live in California...
Your taurus exhaust would not have made it past 1995 in Canada. And even then, you would have been lucky.
I do not know what Ford headers are made of, but I could bet it's not 16 gauge aluminized steel. Mostly because Ford has to warranty them for 60000 miles...
Now, I will not pretend I did a reliability study on contour y-pipes. But I am a metallurgist, and if asked to ballpark the average life of an aluminized downpipe, I would probably say 4 years. With the 409SS being over ten. So it basically comes down to how long you want to keep the car.
Marco Tatta
98.5 SE MTX, Duratec
EGR block, fog light
fix, custom shift boot, monsterflow intake, Ecotek valve
Quasi dual cardoctor exhaust.
Hacksaw short shift, Momo race "s" carbon knob, ghetto rear strut bar, 16 inch cougar wheels with 225/50/16 kumho 712s
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