The Kooks system we are talking about here today will be for the 2013 and 2014 Shelby
GT500 owners out there who are interested in picking up one of the highest quality systems
available for the 5.8 powered Shelby and one that will provide you with an aggressive,
but not over the top tone.
Now, prospective buyers can look forward to the very high-quality 304 stainless throughout,
including the twin 4-inch tips available, by the way, in your choice of polished or
black for just north of 1,300 bucks, depending on your tip color of course.
Now your install will not involve any cutting or permanent modification, so let's go one-out-of-three
wrenches on the difficulty meter here with a more detailed walkthrough to come later
in the video.
So for those who don't know, Kooks is a killer exhaust company and they've been doing their
thing ever since Papa Kook made his very own set of headers in the garage for the family
race car back in the 1960s.
And as someone who has had the pleasure of meeting Papa Kook, God bless him and checking
out the facilities in North Carolina, I can tell you that the guys eat, sleep, and breathe
exhaust systems.
It's all they do and it's really evident in the quality of their build.
But with the brief history lesson wrapped up, let's get into the sound of the Kooks
catback on the might 5.8.
And angry doesn't even begin to sum things up here.
Now, just a very, very aggressive sound coming from the TVS blow Shelby and one that is fitting
of the GT500 badge.
So going to my patented wake the neighbors scale, I have the Kooks coming in at a very
stout four-out-of-five on my one to five or one to wake the neighbors scale.
Now, inside the car, sure you're gonna hear things a little bit, but it's certainly not
a drony system by any stretch of the imagination.
But moving away from the sound and into the build and construction, and again, a very
top notch system from tip to tip here.
And that typically will be your experience when entertaining a Kooks exhaust system here
on the site.
This does include premium grade 304 stainless steel throughout the benchmark in the category
and ultimately, the best at reducing corrosion over the years.
You're also gonna be looking at 3-inch mandrel bent tubing leading into and out of the high
flow oval muffler before finally exiting out the twin 4-inch tips here, which are embossed
with that Kooks logo.
Again, guys, just a heads up, you can grab these things in a polished finish, which you're
looking at here, for that 1,300 or so dollar price tag.
The black tip option will kick things up 100 or 200 bucks extra and you can find that system
on the site as well.
Finally, Kooks does throw in a lifetime warranty for this system for a little added peace of
mind over the years.
But switching gears, let's talk about the installation, and again, a very simple bolt
on job, one-out-of-three wrenches on the difficulty meter, as we've already pointed out.
And to give you a better idea of what's involved here, here's a detailed walkthrough.
First thing we're gonna do is take a 13-millimeter socket and loosen the clamps up that hold
our mufflers to our over axle pipes.
And we'll do the same thing on the other side.
Next thing we're gonna do is remove the two 15-millimeter bolts holding the Panhard bar
support brace.
I'll just pull this down to give our over axel pipes a little bit more room to slide
out.
Next thing we're gonna do is loosen up the clamps at our H-pipe.
I have a 15-millimeter socket on my impact gun.
Next thing we're gonna do is remove the axle back mufflers.
Before we do that though, we wanna spay down our rubber isolators with some WD-40.
All right.
The first rubber hanger we are going to remove is the one furthest back to the end of the
car.
Pop the hanger out of the isolator.
Now we can go back here and move our over axle pipe out of the way.
All right.
Once that drops down, we can slide our muffler out of the rear hangers.
And we'll do the same thing on the other side now, start off with our rearmost hanger, pop
that out of the rubber isolator.
Once we've detached the over axle pipe, we can slide the whole muffler out of the two
rear hangers.
We're now ready to remove the over-axle pipes.
I'm just gonna lift up a little bit, slide them forward out of the clamp and route them
back over the axle and out of the car.
And we'll do the same thing on the other side.
First thing we're gonna do with this install here is get the left side over axle pipe installed.
Keep in mind that Kooks does mark left from right so you don't mix that up.
All right.
We're just gonna leave this clamp loose for now.
We'll get our right side over axle pipe installed and then move on from there.
All right.
We'll do the same thing for the right side.
I did spray a little WD-40 inside the clamps just to help me slide these new pipes into
place.
All right.
Now we are ready to install the over axle section of the pipe here.
We're gonna slide a clamp on first.
Do not forget to put your clamps on or else you'll be taking your exhaust back apart,
and we're gonna go up over Panhard bar support brace and down onto our extension pipe here.
Next thing we can do is go to the left side over axle pipe.
Again, don't forget to put your clamp on first.
All right.
We're now ready for our mufflers.
All right.
We're ready to install our muffler now.
First thing we're gonna do is slide it into the rear hangers.
Once we've got the front hangers in place, we can now get our rear hanger in place.
Don't forget to spray those down with some WD-40.
It's gonna help you get them popped on a lot easier.
All right.
We'll do the same thing on the right side now.
First, we need to get our rear hangers started in the rubbers.
And we'll get our rear hanger now.
All right.
We're gonna start to tighten up some clamps now.
I'm gonna start right back here at the first axle back clamp.
Guys, make sure you've got your clamps lined up right.
These are pretty tough to get lined up.
That's gonna wrap up our review and install of this Kooks Cat-Back Exhaust.
Be sure to check out more at americanmuscle.com.