Headers, Intake and Exhaust?
 

Hey everyone, newbie question coming here. So after reading those sticky and learning more info, its seem that its better to upgrade the HIE all together is that correct? Or would separate upgrade be fine also? Also For the headers, UEL and EL mainly produced different exhaust sounds (Beside the better power output on EL)?

Thanks!

If you do a search for any particular header you may just find some dynos and you can see whether if the torque curve and power band is to your liking.

Generally UEL will have a earlier torque peak while EL will yield higher top end power. Peak power difference seem to be minimal with the short tube offerings. Though there are a few long tube EL header that produce amazing amount of bottom end torque. Long tube headers tend to be at the higher end of the price range for good reason. Longer tubes, more bends, more welding. So you tend to get what you pay for.

I've done exhaust components separately starting with catless front pipes of different diameters (resonated and non resonated), track pipe, catbacks, short tube and long tube headers by themselves and in various different combinations with the exhaust. They all yielded increase in power of different levels. I've settled on the factory catback and have used my track pipe maybe twice. (too damn loud)

As far as intakes go, I've not felt the need to upgrade aside from a washable drop in filter panel, then just a silicon intake tube mainly for clearance purposes. I've foud that intake tube by themselves ready don't do anything besides clean up the engine bay a bit. They also seem to heat soak a bit quicker than the stock intake tubing with all the accessories attached. I'm guessing all that surface area has a sort of heat sink effect, but I could be wrong.

Hope that helps.

best bang for buck likely

drop in filter
tune
catless header

header is largly wasted without tune and you will likley get p0420 cel code.
leave the intake alone unless you chasing every last hp

If you get headers i suggest keeping oem front pipe it will sound more clean and the power gains a re so minimal on them i bet you wont even feel it

Front pipes, I've found, make a nice gain in the midrange and better throttle response both when coupled to a header and with the stock header.

I swapped my high flow cat front pipe back to the OEM front pipe and only lost 3kw. Drone and rasp was reduced which was a nice tradeoff for marginal/negligable power loss. This is with catless UEL header and Perrin resonated exhaust.

I've not tried any catted front pipes.

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...4a&oe=56B5E345

Only difference between those pulls is the front pipe. Same tune (aside from load limit adjustment) same header same catback.

I had a greddy evo 3 with tomei EL headers and Tomei OP and invidia catless front pipe with OFT, after i swap to oem front pipe & tomei 60r i felt more gains then i had, Im guessin diffrent exhaust system has a role to play too. But in my case OE FP made it sound more clean and yied me more power mid to up top for sure.

:iono: Well, I'm glad I'm seeing gains then. lol Throttle response was very noticeable for me as well even with stock headers.

The only thing that I'm going to add to this that isn't otherwise discussed to death in the stickies is that if you're planning on doing catless headers, please keep a cat in the front pipe if this car is your daily. A fully catless car can be pretty rough to live with.

Fully catless, and fully civilized. I have a plm/nameless knockoff long-tube header, 2.5" overpipe, 2.5" resonated front pipe, OEM mid-pipe, and Top speed pro-1 axle-back exhaust. It sounds good, there's no highway drone, and it really snarls when I open it up. I have an auto, a Phantom ESC, an Open Flash tablet and I do my own tuning. The tune itself can have a dramatic effect on the quality of the sound.
So I agree with part of what you've said. A catless system on the wrong tune, would be pretty rough to live with. A catless system does have a different smelling exhaust though. It makes it really easy to know if there are any exhaust leaks though.

It's the smell I was referring to, and the lack of any semblance of emissions compliance. I don't doubt that you can dial in the sound.

A stoic petrol mixture doesn't smell too bad. Can't say the same about E85 though...

Also, about the stock FP vs a stock-ish 63mm diameter catless pipe. If you look at my graph you see that the peak numbers are pretty much identical, but peak numbers don't tell the whole story. You look at the torque curve at 3500~4500rpm you'll see a nice little 10 ftlb. lump of torque the catless pipe is making over the stock FP. You'll feel that driving day to day just putting around town. At least I do. Although the header and tune might have something to say about that lump as well.

I may do the same test with the stock header once it's time for my smog test just to see if it's the same as what I'm getting with my current setup.