Quote:
Originally Posted by Keenercarguy
I can take a picture when I get home but a friend and I both just spaced out our mufflers a ways from the mid pipe. I have about an inch long gap there. Some gas still hits the muffler and at higher speeds it exhibits less drone than a track pipe. The degree of spacing affects both the acoustics and the volume.
A lot of people are probably thinking "you're an idiot and will melt your bumper or something" but my friend has one of the first FR-S' and has had it that way since just after purchase, with absolutely no issues whatsoever, sounds great too. We both intend to get really good aftermarket cat-backs (nameless is my intent) at some point and didn't see the point in spending limited college funds on something that wouldn't be very good (cheaply made aftermarket parts aren't fun).
ANYWAY to the brief tutorial.
Parts: further explanation in the steps
Two bolts at about 2.5 inches long
Two nuts of equal threads
2-6 quarter inch nuts for use as washers
A few regular washers for fine tuning the gap.
Two wrenches, I want to say that the OE nuts/bolts are 13mm but I'm not 100% sure and I am out of town at the moment so I can update later if necessary.
Remove the two bolts that connect the mid pipe to the muffler. You can jack the back left up for this and make it super easy, or you can just crawl under. Breaking everything loose is the only hard part of this whole process. Be careful to not strip the nuts, I could see someone doing that if they weren't a little careful.
Fetch some bolts of equal diameter (to OE) but about 2.5 inch length at a hardware store. If you're worried about them rusting or getting damaged get spares, I did but haven't used them in over a year of use so far.
Buy some nuts that are just barely larger in inside diameter to the outside diameter of your bolts, so that they can slide over the bolt but don't have too much play. These are your spacers; my friend used powder-coated spacers from his Legends racecar when he did his, so if you have those laying around too then more power to you. If you want things to be perfect than also grab a few regular washers so you can fine-tune your preferred sound.
While you have the muffler uncoupled, be sure to remove the gasket that sits between the two pipes, that *can* melt slowly over time, but won't hurt anything if it does (my friend didn't remove his and I did remove mine, his pipes are dirtier… he doesn't care).
Bolt everything back together with whatever spacing you choose, anything more than like an inch and a quarter starts to push the left exhaust tip out a tiny bit (noticeably): but you'll be approaching track pipe loud after that point anyway.
If you don't like it, oh no! You can just put it all back together in a few minutes.
Congratulations, you spent about $8 and don't need to chop up a muffler..?
I am curious how the chopping will go for you though!
Edit: Hope I didn't thread jack you too hard -_-'
|
I really want to try this!!
How much gap did you have? About 1 nut width?
I need pictures. I'm going to try this on my other car.