Is there a difference between the years? I'm looking to pick up a spare and obviously, the 85-87s are more plentiful.

A friend of mine has a 88 GT his Y-pipe cracked where the two pipes meet. Nobody makes a new one for 88's only 85-87 we had s dad re-weld it and then we used a 50' roll of header wrap on it. There must be a diffrencein the two, couldn't tell you what it is though. perhaps it has to clear a revised piece or part on on 88's

Besides the heat shield I don't think there was that much difference between the cross-over pipes. I believed that the 88s cracked more often than the other years because of the heatshield acting as headwrap. (If you wrap it be ready to get another Y-pipe)but after seeing some 85-87 pipes crack including my own I have to reconsider. My revised theory is that they both crack but I wonder now how much a bad motor mount would contribute to it since the mount that breaks, the front one, is right where the crossover bolts onto the rest of the exhaust.
Could the movement from a bad mount cause the cracking based on physical stress?

What do you guys think?

quote Originally posted by Two88GTs: Is there a difference between the years? I'm looking to pick up a spare and obviously, the 85-87s are more plentiful.

Yes! The '88 Y-pipe (as well as the downpipe into the catalytic convertor) are different from the '85-'87 ones.

The major difference is in the downpipe side......the '88 y pipe is "shorter" from the Y to the flange with the downpipe (and therefore the downpipe is "longer" ahead of the bend into the cat).

You cannot use an '87 Y-pipe on an '88 Fiero unless you also use the '87 downpipe. The EGR tube is also different on the '88 (different bends due to different location of EGR valve), so you either have to replace it with an '85-'87 tube or carefully bend the '88 to fit properly.

Good luck!

Yeah, what he said!

I tried to replace a bad cat with one from an exhaust system off of an 85. The y-pipe to exhaust pipe connection is in a different location. If you use an 88 exhaust system with a pre-88 y-pipe, the two pipes will cross one another. In my case, I was trying to use an 88 y-pipe with a pre-88 exhaust, and ended up with a gap of a few inches at the joint.

You can use the pre-88 y-pipe, if you get a pre-88 head pipe to go from the y-pipe to your catalytic converter.