New And Need Help

[kinger]

Hello to everyone, obviously im new on here. I need some help, I have a P reg Legnum and my exhaust is on the way out and cant seem to find a replacement, so need to know if anyone knows where i can get one or of a good custom one. I had a quote from a place that makes POWERFLOW but had mixed reveiws of them. Are they any good?? If anyone out there knows please let me know. Thanks.

[stuey]

Some of the custom systems places are better than others. Or, cheaper would be source a decent secondhand standard system, or buy a high quality aftermarket system like Blue Flame or Fujitsubo..

Whereabouts are you, so people can recommend you somewhere to look ?

[kinger]

Thanks mate, im in southampton, the car is box standard and even still has a limiter, other then removing the limiter what other modifications would you recommend?

[White Lightning]

Hi Kinger, welcome to CVR4, I just wanted to let you know that I deleted your duplicate thread in the membership forum.

[aboo]

Hi & Welcome to CVR4. pictures of you car are compulsory.

[Nick Mann]

It's difficult to recommend mods without knowing what you want from the car.

For power, an exhaust is one of the first things to go for anyway. If you go down the custom route and don't want it too loud, make sure they include a bare minimum of one inline silencer, maybe even two. And a big back box!

I can't recommend anyone in your neck of the woods though - sorry! Hope you enjoy your car and your time here.

[Dom B]

Well you can spend £2-300 on a mig welded lunchtime exhaust like powerflow/ sebring/mongoose which will give you a better sound more than any real power increase or you can sepnd anything up to £1000 to £3000 on a proper mandrel bent hand tig'ed exhaust with all the downpipes etc that will really give you proper power gains if thats what you after. Either way it is illegal to put a bog standard exhaust on, there is a v6 in there let it sing lol.

[Nick Mann]

Dom - not sure I completely agree with you there. On a turbo'd car all you really need is an easy exit - you don't really need anything over engineered. For a normally aspirated car, then I think you are much closer to the truth.

IMO a £300 system will give you most of the gains that a £3000 system will on a VR4.

My reasoning is that the biggest importance in a turbod car is the pressure drop accross the turbo. Therefore the most important thing you can do with the exhaust is remove the restrictions. On a no-turbod car, gas speed/flow/pulse rate can have a major effect on the power of the car, but on a turbo'd car the pulses are smoothed by the turbo, meaning pressure drop is much more significant in aiding flow of gases.

[Bat]

Hi,

Cheers,
Gavin

[Dom B]

Yeah i partially agree, but for a reasonable road car mega power of not you need a balance of not being too loud and with silencing comes restriction. To silence effectively without restricting you need to do some proper time and patience engineering not just a load of perf pipe in a row. Agreed we are not tuning the pressure waves but there is still a lot to be had from doing it right.

E.g. the best way to get power is to reduce the cat back pressure. I don't recognise cat bypass pipes because they are totally illegal. yeah yeah i've heard the storied about out cars being imports so they can't be stopped on emissions but you should try telling that to my mot man! They even check emissions on the fly in london by shining a laser through the traffic flow and they stop you if you don't pass, so going home to quickly bolt your cat back in won't help you there.

You need to do something proper like using 2 high flow race cats, whats more they need to be staggered. People assume that the header length makes no difference because the cheap OE pipe just pokes into the side of the front down pipe, but having the face of the cats at different lengths from the heads and turbos causes the front and rear banks to run at different temperatures and pressures.

I have a kakimoto exhaust on mine at the moment, 3" mid pipe and it is cr*p. It sounds so awful you can barely tell it is a V6 under all that noise and motorway cruising is painful. (i didn't put it on there by the way).

I am in the process of building a proper rear system at the moment which will then be followed by the center and finally the properly designed front section.

I will be posting the dyno tests and build diary for anyone that is interested. They may even be for sale at the end if they work lol.

There are plenty of 'look a like' proper front pipes like the pro shop lida thing but it isn't a good exhaust by any means.

Maybe spending mega bucks isn't necessary for turbo cars, perhaps someone needs to tell the skyline boys, they have almost the monopoly on proper exhausts. I saw one of their pipes the other day and it was £10,000. yikes!!!

[shrew]

Hi newbie, and welcome.

i had this scenario myself some time ago, but like a lot of folk, i wanted something personal, custom made, but i didn't have an enormous budget either.

i still managed to achieve what i wanted, but the key to it was that the stock centre section was still good and useable?

i did an article on it which is in the articles section, called something like "custom exhaust on the cheap"

essentially, i fitted a de-cat pipe up front, a straight through tube with the flange at each end, now available on ebay for about £60 i think.

keep the centre section if this is in good condition. it has two i think shallow blown resonator boxes within it, and this helps stop unwanted drumming and humming coming into the car without being at all restrictive.

and then finish it off with pipe up to the tip of your choice, or use a performance silencer box and tip if you want it a bit more tame.

i wanted it loud, and got it loud, but not horrendously or offensive.

twin tips from a siamese set of final pipes would be nice, not many have done this.

a fellow great member wodjno has done quite a bit of pipe messing and could well be worth a look at his threads too.

remember to use at least 2.5 inch pipework, 3 inch is nice but not always easy, or essential depending on your other mods.

If you're going to improve the air flow and boost levels aswell, certainly try to use 3 inch or close where you can, as this will be sufficient no matter how far you want to go!

De-cat will make the biggest difference, but be warned, these run incredibly rich and close to emmision mot failures at the best of times, so this will only make matters a tad scarier once a year!

If you go this route, and other mods for that matter, read the threads on how to lean the mixture off, and junking the maf for map2 ecu running etc.

you're in the right place, and welcome aboard.

these can be tricky cars, but youre in safe hands

cheers, all the best

shrew

[Nick Mann]

This thread is turning into an exhaust-off!

Dom - no arguments with the theory. Skyline buffs will want to spend more on exhausts I guess, as they are potentially running a lot more power. Most people in a VR4 are going to be limited to low/mid 300's on the power front, due to fuel cut restrictions. A full standalone might get you closer to 400, but even then I'd question the need for a several thousand pound exhaust. If you are going for custom turbos/injectors etc, then at that point the expensive exhaust may become more useful.

So I still stand by my point. A cheap as chips powerflow jobby will give the majority of the power increase of a several grand properly engineered system.

I will humbly give you a full concession on the cat issue though! If left in you will need to do something clever and/or expensive as that is a restriction hindering the pressure drop accross the tubs.

[shrew]

Hi Nick

i concurr

no need to spend a fortune for 300hp.

if youre starting with 260+ anyway, a free flow exhaust on even a tight budget will release at least a few ponies, but pave the way to make supporting mods much more responsive.

mine didn't cost much at all, probably cheaper still than the powerflow option, and the only thing i wanted but at the time didn't exist was some decent downpipes.

are they reasonably available now?

Kinger, i know this isn't very practical logisticly, but if you can spend a day or even two in Nottingham, ive got a fantastic guy for custom pipework now.

his work has found its way onto many of my other cars and bikes, and the design and workmanship is superb, and the price is very reasonable too.

There are several members in and around nottingham, so i'm sure we could keep you entertained whilst your car is transformed into a howling banshee!

cheers

shrew

[AlanDITD]

It's difficult to recommend mods without knowing what you want from the car.

For power, an exhaust is one of the first things to go for anyway. If you go down the custom route and don't want it too loud, make sure they include a bare minimum of one inline silencer, maybe even two. And a big back box!

I can't recommend anyone in your neck of the woods though - sorry! Hope you enjoy your car and your time here.

Or do what i did and hae a full 3" system no cats no silencers no nothing but a standard back box, and its quiet as a mouse.

Other than boost noise and turbo spool

[valleyforge1]

Ill keep it short.

Hi and welcome to the club. Hope you get sorted soon.

Looks like you are getting some good advice up to now. Good luck.

[miller]

Kinger, i know this isn't very practical logisticly, but if you can spend a day or even two in Nottingham, ive got a fantastic guy for custom pipework now.

his work has found its way onto many of my other cars and bikes, and the design and workmanship is superb, and the price is very reasonable too.

shrew

Shrew, this chap any good at a hard pipe kit for me? where is he based at?

[kinger]

Thanks to every one who gave me advice, very help full.