Any suggestions on a headers and perhaps a quieter performance exhaust? Really, ANY input would be appreciated, as I'm a bit new to the car thing.

The original Volvo mufflers are high quality glasspack(absorption) type mufflers. I go with a stock B20E system or one of the popular Scandik brand kits for a stockish engine. Original B20BE & E's do make good HP/Cubic inch & part of the reason is because the exhaust system is good.

If you're looking at Volvo style mufflers, looking up the inlet end reveals a straight through glass pack design with perforated holes, looking in the other end reveals a mandrel 80+ degree bend. 2" OD for B20B & 2.125" OD for B20E's.

4-2-1 Headers: Each level of performance modifications requires a different size header. Example: For a B20 with a stock hear, 1.5" OD primaries leading in to 1.75" OD secondaries into a 2.125" pipe from the headers to first muffler is the sizes you want. Now if you have a carefully ported head with, you can ad .125" of an inch to those dimensions. My point is, if you put the larger size headers on to a stock head, then you will loose power. Alternately, if you by the small bore headers, than they will be too small for feature modifications & the small bore headers perform barely any better than standard.

4-1 Headers: BHP's 1.5" x 32" headers with a step up to 1.625" half way along their length are the ultimate for a stock B20E. On a bigger motor I have used both 1.625 x 32" long & 1.75" x 29" headers, but both of these would be useless on a stock head B20 compared to a standard, high quality B20E exhaust.

For a stock head B20, I'd use a stockish exhaust manifold & I'd like to try an engine pipe with it's dual 1.75" pipes lengthened to 24" feeding into a 2.125" pipe that joins the 2 pipes to the first muffler. A megaphone that steps the 2.125" pipe up to 2.5" mufflers with a 2.5" over axle pipe leading in to a 2nd muffler would be good & then if this is too loud, you could neck the tail pipe that leads out of the last muffler back down in size to 2.125". Remember the the exhaust gasses are cooling after they leave the engine & that reducing the exhaust size at the tail end doesn't restrict as much as you'd think because the volume of gas is much less by the time it gets to the end of the car.