NitroDann's Long Awaited Garage Thread

[gslender]

It did. I will PM you soon.

G

[NitroDann]

Fitment issues?

Also, I forgot to send the dam plastic bit, will send monday.

Dann

[gslender]

Hey Dann, just to confirm, really need you to buy a bung and GM IAT if you can. I cut the bung on the I take you sent me, and it still only screws in a few threads, so either the bung is wrong or the IAT is.... Ok?

G

[NitroDann]

Yeah ok.

Um...

You know its a tapered thread right?

hang on, what thread is it?

Dann

[NitroDann]

Yeah NPT, its tapered.

Dann

[deviant]

Okay so I had Dann build me a full exhaust system for my NB and send it over to me in Perth.

I promised him I would give him a full update on fitting and living with the exhaust he built and this I will do...But after a full day of motorsport and a couple of bottles of wine it wont be tonight It is also my partners 30th birthday today which she put aside for me to do motorsport so I better not spend all night talking cars....though the GP is on the TV

Dann has never heard how the exhaust sounds so to give him something to look at until I update here is a couple of videos of me launching. I have onboard videos to but I have not processed them yet.

[deviant]

Right I know Dann is hanging to see some more. My apologies to him for being slow, flat chat at the moment.

Back in May I asked Dann to build an exhaust system for my NB8B. I was quite picky on my requirements. It must have a cat, it must retain the exhuast gas recirculation pipe as removing that triggers a CEL (though does not affect running), it must be twin exit, it must run in the stock location to make installation easy and it also had to make a bit more noise but I did not want it to be to noisy...just enough to make the car sound and feel better but nothing that would wreck driveability or draw attention. Of course it also had to make more power / torque.

We decided to approach wozzah for a set of extractors off the shelf rather than Dann spending hours putting one together. Wozzah knows his stuff and this transaction went smoothly.

Right from the start Dann has been on the phone and PM's. I knew from the start that I would have to wait a while for an NB to appear at his house that he could use to model the exhaust on, this was fine with me.

Dann has proven himself to be passionate, knowledgable, bloody pedantic about fit / finish / quality and customer service and also just plain friendly and great to chat to about cars and life in general.

The exhaust was delivered to me on Friday 20th July very well packed with all the gaskets, nuts, bolts and washers I would need to fit it. He even painted it in black VHT paint for me but some of this rubbed off in transit. I just need to go to supercheap and grab a can and touch it up.

I was entered in to a single venue tarmac rally on Sunday 22nd July so the clock was ticking for the install. I spent the Friday arvo going around the stock system spraying everything with WD40 and loosening what I could before having to do some other stuff.

Removal of the stock system is a sh*t of a job to be honest. It is heavy and attaches to the car in too many places and is in a number of sections. It took a couple of hours to dig the stock system out. The only way to do it with good access is to drop all of the factory bracing which is actually very easy. This will make install easier to.

Install of the system built by Dann was overall not difficult to do:

The oxy sensor clears the car body by a CM or so, I found the easiest thing to do here was to trace the wire back to a connector and unplug it to get the wire out of the way. It was then a combination of getting the sensor started in the hole with the manifold half off and then getting the manifold on to finish screwing it in.

The EGR pipe was always a bit of a concern for us as the car used to build the exhaust on was an SP which has a different arrangement. The aftermarket extractors did not have a fitting for the EGR pipe. I bought the manifold fitting from BEGI and took some pictures of my car for Dann to work from. He almost nailed the position of the fitting considering he only had a couple of pictures to work from. The cross over tube landed about 25mm away from the end of the fitting and maybe 10mm to one side. This is not ouside of the scope of being able to bend the cross over pipe to meet it so I was not worried about it. The 25mm short fall was nothing that Dann did wrong, the bit supplied by BEGI appears to be a bit shorter than the factory fitting.

At first I tried levering the cross over pipe to bend it in to place which went wrong when old man pry bar slipped and made its way through one of the heater pipes...sh*t. Luckily the hole was near the engine end so I was able to yank it off and cut half an inch off the pipe and put it back. This would have been easier if whoever it was that assembled the engine in Japan had not put the hose clamp on with the bits you squeeze together on the underside!! I stuck the pipe in a vice after that and guessed at how much to bend it.

My cross over pipe is cracked so I had already got a new one, I am going to post my cracked one to Dann to keep on his shelf for a template on future builds. Dann agreed this is a good idea. Honestly...depsite my dense moment of slipping and bursting a coolant pipe if you are installing an exhaust system then you have enough knowledge to not be flumoxed by a short fall on a bendable pipe. It took all of 5 minutes to bend it to fit and I do not view it as a negative experience to the install but I know Dann is keen to hear where he went wrong.

Believe it or not but the rest of the system just flew in to the car in about 20 minutes. It runs in the stock locations and touches nothing. It hangs no lower that a stock system and the rear mufflers are not visible until you get down low.

I need to get underneath to take some better pictures but the rear has two mufflers in a Y shape but for now here is a picture of how it looks from the rear. Very stock looking.



Here it is pre install, you can see how the two rear mufflers bolt together to form the Y shape:



Oh yes something that went wrong that was my own silly fault. The addition of a second outlet on the left hand side means I need to cut a bit of bumper out but when I installed it I found that it only just touched the bumper...out of time and inclination I decided to pack up for the day and do the cut out another day. Turns out exhaust tips get bloody hot in competition and are capable of making their own cut outs

Luckily the rear section is very easy to remove so I can tidy it up later.



Does the system make more power and torque? Butt dyno and sound theory tell me yes but I have not been on the dyno to find out officially. The car does feel stronger and more willing to rev and more willing to pick up all through the rev range. I use my car on track and in competition and I know it well enough to know when something has changed and something definitely has changed for the positive. Mission accomplished Dann.

I know Dann is worried about how loud the system is. I am told it is not silly loud from the outside, just a bit louder than stock but with a harder rasp to it. Just right.
From inside the car there is a bit of drone in the 2000-3000RPM range but it seems to soften out with a larger throttle opening and in the cruise position. It is just in the part throttle range. At higher RPM the sound changes in to the harder rasp again. I suspect some of the drone I am hearing is also being caused by removing the boot carpet and spare wheel for the rally which would damp some of the noise from the mufflers. There is always a compromise in a free flowing exhaust system on a N/A engine....you either block the noise and block the fast flow of gas or you let the gas flow out and pick up some noise with it.

There is a lovely bit of a pop to be heard in the exhaust on the over run which is very nice.

I am happy with the sound from it and consider Dann to have been entirely successfull in achieving what I wanted.

Right just one more thing, here is some onboard footage from the rally I did so you can hear how it sounds flat chat from inside the car. Note the car also has a K&N intake kit. Like all great drivers I have a number of excuses lined up concerning my performance

[dimarg]

sounds purrrfect !

[Apu]

I love the sound of it! Like an old school Alfa (well...listening through an iPad)

[wozzah1975]

looks great, Well made Dann, very impressive

Cheers
Woz

[NitroDann]

Heres just some eye candy.

For the record Gslender wasnt happy with fitment, it wasnt the right angle for his setup so Im remaking it in the next couple of days and hes making do with this one for now.






Dann

[charlie_91]

i thought he wouldnt be disappointed ?

[NitroDann]

Miscommunication. Hes not disappointed in me, and ive not let him pay a cent yet. And the whole job is only 100 dollars, for both intakes, shipped to brisbane.

...

...

I'd say he isnt disappointed at all..

Dann

[PaulF]

Needs moar weld porn.

[16bit]

awesome work mate. i c a new ic pipe brief coming your way early next year!!