LCE Long tube header 2trfe 2.7

** If you run your truck hard and have modified a bit.. check this out before picking up these headers**

Fit and finish- 2 out of 10

Performance- 10 out of 10

-Mig splatter, pits and blemishes disappointing . No leaks though. (my buddy’s five year old same model headers beautiful welds)

-Will not fit without removing all but one exhaust stud (or chop into your coil bucket). Had to hang header and gasket on front stud underneath coolant hose, then install each stud through header flange. Tapped each well beforehand so that I could set each fully by hand. No room or stud length for double nut tightening.

-literally 3/8” clearance between cyl 2 tube and coil bucket when installed.

-collector and catalytic connection misalignment. In there defense I am running URD’s old cat delete pipe not stock.. but I didn’t have nearly as bad misalignment issue.

-hit and dent number 2cyl tube under heavy load and launches. I was worried about the clearance and was getting ready to hard mount engine to prevent this.. but I like to drive my truck.. took one hard launch and I could hear a change in the exhaust note immediately. Had me worried that I had mechanical issues. Thankfully, it was this dent in #2 tube, sound difference was between 2500/3000 rpm. Having some misfire random misfires if under load at this rpm as well. It’s crazy what a dent in a header can do to the exhaust pulse and how it affects performance.

-all in all, I’m used to dealing with fitment issues and the struggles of modifying.. but this was a bit much. Full disclaimer, love LCE and my engine has bunch of there goodies inside and they have been nothing but helpful when issues come up. I hope they do the same with this. I’m currently reaching out to them. Hopefully some changes can be made to the design to accommodate 3rd gens limited space but still be good for 2nd gens as well.
I attached photos from install and after math of clearance issues.

 

Update.
I got in touch with LCE and this issue may or may not be a fluke. They want to work together with me and see what’s going on. A fresh header has already been shipped. This time I will properly lay out the new and stock header side by side check for fitment differences if any. Then I will pull the damaged header out of the truck and slap it next to them to compare as well.
Shipping is being funny right now but I will be posting my findings along with many clear pictures.

 

Neat.

Are all of the tubes equal length?

How much do you gain with these?

Can you reprogram to accommodate the better exhaust?

 

I’m the meantime, I am preparing for tight fit issue to still be there. I found a decent junkyard set of engine mounts and I am poor man stiffening them with ultra grey rtv (For now).
LCE wanted to help with this as well and are checking their engine mount guy (solid-off-road.com) who is down the street from them apparently. Hope that pans out because solid-off roads engine mounts for the v6 look bomb proof. I also reached out to Martech and spoke with Nick on this and he says they will have an engine mount in the works at a later date, one man rodeo, props to him. Saw something on summitracing as well.. hard day without having it in hand but there is a chance the engine mounts from 94’ till 2023 are the same if not similar enough to use. I’ll get a couple pictures of my hardened mounts and post them. It’ll be enough for temporary job while I figure something out

 

It is claimed to have equal lengths I can better check that when the new set gets here.I definitely saw an improvement in power. I don’t have dyno numbers but from feel I’d guess 10-20hp range give or take. And the trucks computer is constantly adjusting to maintain lambda. It accommodated this no problem.

 

I'd have to see dyno numbers to believe 20 HP. Seat of pants dyno are notoriously inaccurate.

I probably wouldnt have noticed the fit problems, every set of Thorley or Hooker headers I ever put on had to be hammered into place.

 

Still waiting for USPS, fingers crossed be here sometime this week and in one piece. Got a couple pics of the junkyard engine mounts I’m “stiffening”. One mount is as cracked pretty bad so I will use that on the compression side (passenger). The other mount is the first pic and shows what I started to do with it. found a couple more tubes of ultra grey and plan to shove more in between covering plate and mount itself. I’m actually pretty impressed with the results so far. Took a couple days but after a fully curing it is surprisingly stiff. Not stiff to the point will tear or crack but really locked up the amount of movement. More pics soon.

 

yeah when i installed mine they hit the engine mount. solved it by sawzall-ing the corner of the mount where it was hitting. i messaged them about the poor fitment and they said i have sagging engine mounts which literally makes no sense plus the truck had like 30K miles on it. loved the power gain, hated the poor fitment, but have held up great and still look amazing after 40k miles. headers are a must do mod for the 2.7. these headers + a tune is makes the truck drivable.

 

That little dent in the header should be fine. Won't really change anything.

 

That little dent will make no difference in the performance of the header.

 

Zero, zilch, nada..

 

My comments and questions:

* Why does your OEM header look so charred? Is that typical? Did the inside of the OEM manifold look like the outside? Plugged up with carbon soot? If so, that explains your power increase. Not the header change. If you have pictures, that would be sharing!

* That engine mount "repair" - for lack of a better word - is going to last about 10 miles before it splits again. You already know that. LOL. Keep up the good work and make that correct.

* Can ANYONE please post a reliable link to a site where someone has actually put their 2.7L on a DynoJet chassis dyno and measured results?!?!? On a clean 2.7L with no other changes. For goodness sake, LCE's own website doesn't even post a dyno chart. Until then, HP gains of 20 HP can and should be ignored. 20 HP?!?! On a 2.7L 4 cylinder engine that only made 160-164 HP in the first place? Those are 5.0L Coyote Mustang numbers WITH a tune, so call me a skeptic.

* That appears to be a decent header, with the most redeeming qualities being equal length (yes, they are equal length as equal length gets) and being ceramic coated. Those two features are great. In other words, an $800 aftermarket alternative to an OEM Toyota replacement.

* NOT CARB (CALIFORNIA) CERTIFIED. That means illegal in basically every state. Not sure where you live, and what your annual inspection looks like, but that ain't kosher IMHO. Not a fan of cat deletes either. There is no point. YMMV.

Cheers!

 

in my case, i replaced my stock headers at around 30k and they looked similar to OP's headers, i live on east coast salt galore. it's just the way they look i guess, very nasty. I've passed inspection twice with the lce headers twice in Rhode Island. Yes OP should have replaced with OEM engine mount, not sure why make a repair like that. Header mod for consumer-like cars are known to certainly give decent noticeable power. car companies for whatever reason maybe regulations make headers that are the size of a straw. the lce headers made my stock headers look TINY. You will never see a dyno for this case because no one cares about a 2.7L tacoma, there's so few of us. we are very lucky that there is even someone making any aftermarket power mods for our slow trucks. my dyno was the fact that it stopped downshifting on certain hills on my daily commute i have taken hundreds of times over the years, if thats not a good trial for you idk what is. also the added mpg after installing them, .5mpg-1mpg if i remember correctly. im not sure on exactly how many HP's and torque numbers it adds, but i would guess 20 HP is not far from the truth as you can see around a 40HP increase changing out the headers on a GX470 with a slow V8. only comparing it to that car because i have one and done reading on that. could care less about how much HP it adds, torque is what you really want. If i had to take a wild guess i say it adds 8-15lbs of torque. as i said in my last post, changing out the headers plus getting a tune completely changes this truck. is it still slow? oh yeah. is it way less irritable to drive? big yes. luckily i got them before a price increase but i would still recommend lce or doug headers on this 2.7 tacoma. was going to sell my 2.7 for the v6 like everyone else does but these two mods alone stopped me.

 

I've only lived in states NOT named California. I've installed plenty of options that were NOT CARB certified. No one have EVER looked or asked. The only state that seems to care about the certification (that I'm aware of) is California. I don't think that makes it legal or illegal.

 

Well, that was a few comments. I don’t have any issues with my engine mounts. The picture of the cracked mount is a junkyard find that I am experimenting with temporarily and the cracked one is going to be mounted to the compression (passenger side of engine), I’m hopeful that it will not be tearing more when positioned this way. As for dynojet numbers here is mine from a couple years ago, and only a few mods into the engine. URD supercharged stage 2 kit (cat delete pipe, 90mm pulley instead of stage one 95mm) and no changes to tune sent with kit.
I didn’t have a baseline but my buddies at the shop said they had stock 3rd gen that made 115hp. They said he had 110hp before changing air filter box.
So I’d say at the time I doubled hp numbers making 225hp wheel. Torque right there with it.

 

And sure, here are more pictures of the stock exhaust. It is not carbon build up, just red dirt with some topical rust. If you think this is bad.. you should had seen it before I pressure washed and scrubbed the crap out of the outside. Insides are fine and no excessive carbon build up. I’m merely changing to these headers to maximize performance for my build. And I am grateful that LCE sees the potential in these trucks as I do, and provide support and goodies.
The first picture is a shot into the collector, it’s clean as could be for having 60k plus on them.

 

Anywho, the replacement headers have arrived. The box was pretty mangled and half open. It was also missing the gasket hardware, which I have to let LCE know about so that can put a claim in with the USPS or whatever they do. But I have attempted to lay out both stock and not headers for measuring and finding the angles. Not pretty or easy task, I don’t know what I’m doing, just trying to help out LCE and really push for some design changes if needed for fitment with out chopping stuff up or going hardmount for those just looking to not get to crazy with their build as I have. I really can only see a few subtle differences in measurements between stock and not. My concern really is the collector flange mounting angle and position. As I had troubles getting it lined up as you can see early in post. Bear with me. This is my interpretation of how I made my measurements and my labels for reference points.
I used the header mounting flange as the X-axis,
distance away from mounting flange (outwards from flange) as Y-axis,
distance down from mounting flange as Z-axis.
And used X-axis for zero degree reference for collector flange angle.
What I found with my caveman methods is the collector flange Y-axis is roughly 1/4” closer than stock. Collector flange Z-axis is roughly 1/8” further than stock. And collector flange angle is 13 degrees while stock is 12degrees. It doesn’t seem like much.. but I haven’t removed the damaged header to compare to these two to see if it’s just manufacturing differences or it is how it is. Fingers crossed that the damaged header collector fitment is due to much more aggressive differences in angle and distances. Phew.. that was a lot. Oh yeah, still had MiG splatter and to be honest.. it worst than the first one haha. I’ll live.

 

I forgot to quote you in the post above with the pictures of the stock header, check it out. And I’m in Guam. Emissions are not an issue here yet. And the cat delete increases flow, no question about it and every once of flow counts to me.
If the truck is naturally aspirated with no major modifications or desire to modify in the future... I’m with ya, cat delete probably not money well spent.

 

Well, got the damaged header out and… wow.. the replacement headers is substantially different. The tubing positioning is different and the number 2 tube distance from the flange is further out by about a 1/2”. (This 1/2” comes into play in a minute) As I hoped, the damaged header collector flange was out of whack from the stock and replacement header. Few more degrees and about a 1/2 “closer to the engine.

 

Installed the replacement header and to my surprise it was closer to the frame than the last one. Went from 3/8” down to 3/16” hahaha.
I will say this though.. the collector flange lined up better than ever. Really nice fitment there. And the welds looked really good. I was wrong when I said this new header was worst cosmetically then the first, it’s actually way better. That first header welds compared to the second was night and day. Can maybe see it the pictures above.
Anywho, I’d say keep that flange positioning right there and shorten all the tube lengths by an inch on engine side and it would give plenty of room to clear the frame and probably ease install without raising engine or pulling exhaust studs.
Aaaannnd back to that 1/2” difference on number 2 tube… yes it was really close to the frame, but the kicker was once she warmed up… got even closer. Damn near touching closer. I checked it down the road at the gas station and saw how much it grew and it had a little kiss mark from touching the frame. I kept on driving for a bit, and did a few rolling 2nd gear pulls. (I didn’t hard launch first gear for fear of smashing the holy hell out of it) But when I got home after the pulls and driving around the kiss mark only grew a little bit.
My “stiffened” makeshift engine mount mod really really surprised me at how well it worked. It’s funny because, it works so well that if I had this done with the first header with the 3/8” gap.. it wouldn’t have crashed even on hard hits. Anyway, this ultra grey rtv in these mounts is unreal. The engine idling cant even see it shake under the hood. If you didn’t hear it running you would think it was off. Noticeable noise and vibration in the cab, not crazy but noticeable.But even with my badass budget mod.. at light load, feels like the header is just resting on the frame. I can’t even imagine what would happen if I drove like I want to and mash the skinny pedal off the line.Hopefully LCE can use this information to correct the issue. I’ll be reaching out to them later today to follow up and share what I’ve found with them.
Here’s a few pictures from the header and engine mount swap.