A better Borla UEL
 

The Borla UEL header I bought last year recently started making annoying resonance noises from one or both flex sections. Since I bought it "open box" from Amazon it doesn't have the million mile warranty so I took it to my buddy Greg at Mandrel Bending Solutions along with a pair of Vibrant 1.75" turboflex couplings with interlock liners. Greg also cut off the 2.25" collector and replaced it with a 2.5" collector to eliminate a turbulence causing "lip" in the original collector.


Anyway, I only paid $435 for the header but after adding $50 for the new flex joints and $160 labor for the repairs this header isn't quite the bargain it started out as. I'm just thrilled that those annoying flex joint noises are gone forever.

Looks good to me

Are the UEL giving any kind of UEL sound like on an EJ series?

any difference in sound/rumble? some sound clips would be nice. :D

Thanks. I'm not familiar enough with the EJ sound to compare them. It definitely sounds very different than it did stock.


These recent repairs didn't change the sound other than eliminating any unwanted noises. I really should make a sound clip. I'll try to get one posted soon.

The UELs do indeed make these sound more like WRXs. Not perfectly since the turbo itself changes things in the WRX's exhaust note (a turbo IS, after all, a near-perfect muffler to cancel rasp), but it sounds much more like an Impreza. Not entirely b/c of the high compression in the FA20, but much more like the EJ.

Put on a good catback setup to produce growl instead of drone and it will sound far more like a Subie than it did before.

This is the whole reason JDL swapped from those bellows to the flex braids early on in their builds. They had to warranty most of them due to the rattling. The braids work outstanding.

A little caution regarding flex couplers. Even the SS braided couplers come in several grades of quality and spending a little more upfront can save you a lot later on. The low end SS braided couplers have mild steel end caps that will rust away allowing the coupler to fall apart. Then there are cheap ones with no inner liner, causing exhaust gas turbulence and short coupler service life. For a little more you get an inner braid liner to protect the bellows and smooth gas flow. Top of the line are the couplers with a SS interlock inner liner. They cost twice as much as the cheapest ones but perform better and last much longer.


http://vibrantperformance.com/catalo...Path=1022_1064