My Exhaust, Again...

[Identity_X]

All I did for my exhaust was buy the necessary mandrel bents and welded them together in my garage. I am sure you can do the same, just have a muffler shop to the welding instead. www.jcwhitney.com has all the bents you might need for a decent price.

[SgtRauksauff]

when you say your custom setup tried and failed, what makes it a failure? the noise that you're getting from the muffler?

Here's an Escort LX (top) and Escort GT(bottom) exhaust that I took pics of a while back. Well, this is just the tricky bits of the exhaust, everything else is basically straight..



I did my exhaust the crappy-no-welding way with about 10 clamps, but it's held up just fine. I'm using 2 90° mandrel bends, and 2 45° mandrel bends, all purchased from JC Whitney, I think 16 or 18ga. aluminized. It was cheap. Then, I got a bunch of clamps, and some 2.5"ID to 2.5"ID couplers, and started bolting. (this was before I bought my welder)



This was the temporary setup (temporary until I could get a welde). It rubs against the body heatshields sometimes at the right rpm's, but isn't too bad otherwise. Not the best fit, but better than some I've seen...

--sarge

[MazKid]

It failed because it leaks bad, hangs bad, sounds bad, etc. The new noise just makes it worse.

I was trying to save money. The mandrel bends I got, from a junkyard, were $20 and took care of the S and the part that goes over the axle, pretty completely.

[naprotejay]

just to add to the ideas in the thread, and a few corrections

the pacesetter catback is 2.25" - not 2"

as far as other mandrel bent catbacks, besides the 2.5" Corksport, there's the Martelius from Finland and the Simons from Sweden

the Martelius is a 2" resonated system (that sounds just about perfect to me ) , the Simons is a 2.5" resonated system with a twin tip muffler. Curious about the Simons, would be interesting to hear it and see how it looks...... you could get them through www.jetex.co.uk of England.

also, don't forget the escort ZX2 kits from www.trubendz.com!! the 'tubing only' versions seem to be a great buy for what you get.

here's the Martelius on the ole' pro:

[MazKid]

Well, I took it to the closest place I could find, that had also done work on my brother's MX-6 - Midas.

I walk in there, it's a cold and rainy day, there's no customers, I look in the shop and there's like 4 guys standing there doing nothing. I basically made thier day.

The manager comes to the counter, and I tell him that I need some custom exhaust work done. He asks what, and I tell him that I tried to make the exhaust my self and it didn't work out too well. He takes my key and puts the car on a lift...as the car goes up the other guys are looking under it with faces like "What the hell happened?!". The main guy motioned me to come out. I explained everything I could, exactly how I wanted it done, and that I wanted a converter I had installed. Well, evidently it's against the law for them to install used converters. So that cost me $129 for a highflow converter they had on hand. But hey, it got done.

Basically they fixed the downpipe back. New flange at the downpipe, a pipe back to the converter, another back to my HKS section...had them redo the one weld I did on the HKS, then a new flange after the HKS, pipe to the muffler, and hangers where needed. It came out pretty good and looks very strong. A job well done.

Well, the car is still loud, but now it's just the exhaust noise and not leaks and rattles, so it's a vast improvement. The labor came to $178(close to what Redfox paid!), so the total cost was $334 or so. Which sounds like a lot, but if you look at it, the Powerseries catback is $349 plus shipping, and then I'd still have to get a converter made for it, so it would have been $500+. I think I did the right thing.

However, I've decided that my Magnaflow has got to go. It's too free-flowing which makes it loud. When I stand next to the car, you can here where the exhaust is loud and it's at the magnaflow.

So...I need a muffler that's 2.5" but quiets the car down as much as possible. Any ideas?

[Silentbob343]

borla hush muffler

[MazKid]

I looked for it, but haven't found anything except WRX cat-backs. Do they sell the muffler on it's own anywhere? It's not even on the Borla website.

[Silentbob343]

http://www.borla.com/products/universal.aspx

I know the borla hush for the WRX has a 3" inlet which then goes to 2.5" inside the muffler.
Dual tip non XR-1
40670 3" 2 1/4" 19" x 4" x 9 1/2" Center/Dual $267.99
Single Tip non XR-1
40664 2 1/4" 2 1/4" 19" x 4" x 9 1/2" Center/Offse $191.99
40665 2 1/2" 2 1/2" 19" x 4" x 9 1/2" Center/Offset $193.99

I would shoot them an email and ask if the muffler on the hush series can be purchased by it self.