Here is a header setup to see the plates I am talking about.. If you look closely, you can see it right over/under the X That's a 3" setup, in and out, with the headers helping out the cast iron exhaust ports. That system, with the Hooker Areo-chamber mufflers, with the TA 3" tailpipes, really sounded good... a mellow rumble at idle and light throttle, but real deep and nice when you were on it. This was on the GSX we did last year, and when I was running it at Norwalk, I had 4 or 5 folks come up to me and ask what exhaust system it had on it, after they saw it run. "man, that was awesome sounding" was pretty much what they were saying.
My original in car testing of the x pipe was with a 2.5 inch x. My gains were very respectable at just a tick over .3 seconds. The sytem previously was a 2.5 inch mandrel system with long case dynomax mufflers. All I did was install the x into the system just behind the trans mount, I did have headers. Jim Burek
The only thing I see in Marco's parts list that I would have changed, is that I would have use the TA 2007AT tailpipes.. 2.5" mandrel bent, with the correct cut on the rear.. No fuss, no fooling around, and very nice pieces Cheaper too.. at $159 for the pair. Here are the 3" ones on that GSX..
Jim: Thanks for responding with that info. If you tested by measuring different times on a quarter mile run, how did you control for different track conditions , atmospheric conditions, operator technique between runs , etc. which are among the variables affecting timed performance . For the car you used, what would .3 " convert to in terms of hp increase on a desktop dyno? Thanks for taking the time to engage in this interesting discussion about one of the most popular mods of today.
Marco, thats weird, because I had Rob Chilemski do my X pipe system and he placed my X pipe right in front of the mufflers and said that is where it should be. I am running Poston headers with the 3 X 2.5 X pipe. That was done last April, so maybe he does it different now-who knows!!
Nope, those are the Hooker mufflers.. they look like flowmasters. Sound is halfway between 3 chamber Flowmasters, and Long case Dynomaxes. JW
Man, you're not kiddin'. I thought for sure those were Flow Masters. The sound that you described sounds like what I'm looking for. Deep, tin can sound that grunts hard and loud when under the gun. (To quote Austin Powers) "YEAH baby, YEAH!!
I thought it was obvious to install the "X" as close to heads as possible Two 3" pipes can flow twice the volume of exhaust as a single 3". And air friction increases with length of the pipe, so the quiker the exhaust reaches the "X", the less resistance or back pressure the exhaust will encounter. The bottleneck of the system is then the single pipe from head to "X", and the shorter that is the better.ou: Or am I missing something here?:bglasses:
Hey Bill - I took a 'very' active role :Brow: in the placement and fitting of all the exhaust components. I wanted to ensure the X was as close as possible to the manifolds. Rob wanted to make his customer happy, so he let me run with it. :bglasses: This is the reason it was a 3 hour installation process.
The testing was done on my own vehicle, it's my test bed for product testing. The tests were both performed on the same day within 1 1/2 hours of each other using a vericom on board computer. I always do multiple runs with any change to rule out any wieird readings. I have sheets of logged runs on this vehicle at both the track and my near by personal test area. I pretty much know this car and how it runs . How much power for .3 seconds ? Don't know, the car is 3800 pounds. In testing I have done on the engine dyno with an x pipe, I have shown more than anything a wider power band, not necessarily more peak power, a wider band is very beneficial in propelling a car down the track. Jim Burek
Marco, Yeah I know what you mean by active. I just dropped the car off for the header and x pipe install. ANyway, I went back to him later for a distributor recurve, carb work etc and him and I were working on the motor, he taught me a lot-you should of seen the 2 of us messing with the motor, then of course we had to do the test drives :Brow: :Brow: He knows his stuff!!! take it easy
