Ball and socket over flat plate any day
My thoughts of shorties. They didn't really exist until the 80's. When people started hopping up the fox body mustangs when they were new, they were suddenly a thing. Ford came out with a factory tubular manifolds that were short, a factory shorty header. But the shorty part was a manufacturing feature, not performance. The aftermarket go ahold of this and made higher flow shorties that bolted in place of the stock shorties. The stockers were more designed for fast and easy assembly line work. While better flowing than the cast iron logs that existed before, and a lot lighter as well. But why shorties? Did they perform better than long tube? No, they were a bolt on that didn't require modifying the exhaust. Namely the factory cats that many people still needed in order to pass smog checks and keep the car registered on the road. Aftermarket high flow cats just didn't exist. This was the world of bolt on performance parts. So the factory saw gains with shorty headers, the aftermarket claimed greater gains with there shorties. And they bolted right up with no other modifications needed. Boom! The shorty header is now common place. Long tube perform better, any real performance built engine runs a long tube. But shorties were the hot thing and everyone thinks of them as a performance part. While they do perform better than a log manifold, you are not getting everything you could. But the shorty does also have the benifit in the Bronco world of being a smaller package, so easier to install. But you still need custom exhaust to use them. Unlike the fox body mustangs, the modern shorty header is not an identical drop in for the factory manifold. Which negates the benifit of the original shorty header. But I guess it is still better than a log manifold.
