So, at the recommendation of several people in this forum and in a couple other Jeep forums, I purchased a set of Kooks headers from eBay. These long tube headers and midpipes are built for the '06-'10 SRT8's, but are purported to fit. They do... sort of. There was no grinding of the transmission bell housing necessary, but there were plenty of other issues that made it a pretty damned expensive job. The shop only charged me for 9 hours of labor, but it actually took 12. First, and obviously, the cats and O2 sensors were farther back, so I needed wire harness extensions. Not too expensive, but it adds up. Second, the midpipes are 3", but the stock cats are 2.5". The stock cats wouldn't fit in the new spot anyway, so add new cats to the price. Third, they had to un-bolt the motor mounts and lift the engine to get the old log-style headers out and the new ones in (there were a couple broken bolts that needed to be removed, so it's possible that that's the only reason they had to lift the engine). Finally, and this is just a minor annoyance so far, the new headers have minimal clearance on the passenger side, so when I'm braking hard or backing up a hill, I can hear it rattling. I think it's the firewall, but haven't checked it out yet.
It would have been far cheaper for me to have them fabricate custom headers in-house for the quoted amount of $1000. They would have left the original cats and also would have had fewer clearance issues. However, they would only have been 2.5" diameter. I think I could have lived with that, though.
That said, they're totally badass. I can definitely feel the difference in power, and the engine revs up a lot faster. Before the cats went in, the resonators in the new midpipes gave the exhaust a very aggressive note. If you consider doing this to yours, I recommend getting your headers fabricated, cutting the y-pipe, and routing dual exhaust along the path of the original single pipe. I have a Flowmaster 50 on each pipe, and it sounds fantastic. If I did it over again, I'd use a DI/DO Flowmaster 50 to function as a crossover pipe and a Cherry Bomb resonator on each pipe after the muffler. You'd sound like a freakin' dragster, and your engine will breathe a lot better.
My next thing will be sending my Diablo Intune off for a custom tune. When I do, I'll post the link. If you lack the patience, just Google "Diablo Intune custom tune", and you should find it pretty quickly.
That's all from me, and yes, I know I still owe you guys a vid. Sorry about that!
Time to fire up the grill, crack open some beers, and watch the fireworks.

Sent from my HTC6600LVW using Tapatalk