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      12-08-2021, 06:03 AM   #89
Ichiro
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Your new exhaust sounds good - albeit with a distorting microphone. It looks tidy from the back end too.

I've purchased the same 3d design lip - got a replica from flea-bay. Fitment is a bit tight, but looking forward to mounting it onto the front bumper soon.
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      01-02-2022, 08:46 PM   #90
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Updated exhaust video using my phone and an external mic. Will have the updating piping finished soon as well.

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      01-20-2022, 11:24 AM   #91
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Man I absolutely love the way your car sounds and looks, great job on the build and thank you for sharing it with us. I want to build the same or similar exhaust setup can you let me know which model of VAREX mufflers you are using ?
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Last edited by airwalk776; 01-20-2022 at 11:41 AM..
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      01-20-2022, 11:35 AM   #92
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ichiro View Post
Your new exhaust sounds good - albeit with a distorting microphone. It looks tidy from the back end too.

I've purchased the same 3d design lip - got a replica from flea-bay. Fitment is a bit tight, but looking forward to mounting it onto the front bumper soon.
I did the same the side skirts fit like a glove but the front splitter was little tricky. have a heat gun handy, as far as mounting is goes I used Rivserts and some M6 screws.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...e?ie=UTF8&th=1

Also I recommend on the front lip where the edge of the lip meets the grill in front of the intercooler put down a strip of black vinyl wrap so you don't see the body color under (unless your car is black already then it doesnt matter)
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Last edited by airwalk776; 01-20-2022 at 12:14 PM..
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      01-22-2022, 02:57 AM   #93
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Quote:
Originally Posted by airwalk776 View Post
Man I absolutely love the way your car sounds and looks, great job on the build and thank you for sharing it with us. I want to build the same or similar exhaust setup can you let me know which model of VAREX mufflers you are using ?
Thanks. I believe I'm using mufflers of the system they make for a Mustang. Will probably be hard to replicate without buying the whole system which would probably be more money than it's worth.
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      01-22-2022, 11:23 AM   #94
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Originally Posted by proboner View Post
Thanks. I believe I'm using mufflers of the system they make for a Mustang. Will probably be hard to replicate without buying the whole system which would probably be more money than it's worth.
Thank you sir. I think it’s the 2.5 inlet and outlet with a 3-4 inch tip. Btw my vote is for the volk wheels with the skirts and front lip
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      01-25-2022, 11:43 AM   #95
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Thank you sir. I think it’s the 2.5 inlet and outlet with a 3-4 inch tip. Btw my vote is for the volk wheels with the skirts and front lip
Yup, that's probably the best choice and closest to what I have.
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      01-27-2022, 07:46 PM   #96
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Time for an update, and this will be long! Even though I kind of hate doing it (mainly due to not having a lift, the correct tools, or an assortment of mandrel bends) I finally started building the front half of the exhaust a couple weeks ago. If you'll remember, the Becker exhaust has an insane design flaw in that the initial run of the system, from the downpipe flanges to about where the mid-car exhaust mounts sit, is all 2" piping. It then miraculously jumps up to 2.5" for the rest of the system.





It's a horrible design and not mentioned in any of their marketing material. For reference, here's the complete Becker system installed on my car, but using Varex mufflers:


I had a couple goals while building something to replace it. Of course, the main goal being to move up to 2.5" throughout the system. The secondary goal was to have some sort of a merge, to clean up the sound a bit. The final goal was to reintroduce a cat into the system, so it doesn't smell so bad. I started off by putting together a basic design in my head and tabulating a parts list to create it.

First up was the cat. I knew I didn't want a restrictive stock cat, but being in CA, it's actually really hard to source a high-flow non-California compliant cat. The big sites simply won't ship to you, even if you tell them it's for offroad use. Amazon, Ebay, Summit, Jegs... they're all a no-go. This had actually deterred me for many months, as I'd also wanted a high flow cat for my e30 and had started my search there. Thankfully I eventually found a smaller shop that agreed to send me a 3" race cat for my e30 and a 3.5" race cat for the Z4.


I did the install on the E30 first and used the race cat to replace a very large straight through Magnaflow muffler I had sitting in the middle of the system. It went from sounding like this:


To this:


Just like the Z4, I also have a Varex internal bypass muffler on the E30. I just can't get enough of these damn things! While I awaited the cats, I started to collect the other parts for the system. I decided on 304 stainless to match the rest of the Becker piping and knew that I'd need 2 y-pipes; one to form a merge to run to the cat, and the other to split again to feed each of the mufflers. Once again I hit a snag, in that there are no reasonable dual 2.5" to single 3.5" y-pipes. Don't get me wrong, there are a few on the market, but they are terribly designed. Every one of them goes from dual 2.5" to single ~2.75" and then expands up to 3.5". Who wants a 2.75" restriction in the middle of their exhaust!?


Not good. There is actually one Flowmaster y-pipe that fit the bill decently, but it was out of stock until mid-February, wasn't stainless steel, and the dual section was splayed instead of parallel.


So in the end, I decided to make my own. I'd done it before, so surely I could do it again. Right? I hope. with that decision made, I ordered the piping required to fab it all together.


Once it arrived, I put the car up on jack stands to pull the front half of the exhaust. It was immediately clear that the exhaust leaked all over the place. The slip-on joints in the middle and rear as well as the downpipe flange. The 2" flange on this system is so small that it's bolt holes partially expose the opening of the 2.5" downpipe flange! It's crazy stuff. I pulled the front piping off and mounted up the new flanges on the downpipes. Alas, my first issue; these generic flanges were simply too big. I'd seen N54 specific flanges on the web, but really didn't want to pay $80 for them. I decided I could use my new chop saw to cut them down to size and aimed my focus at fabricating the y-pipes. I actually had a couple big mistakes that caused me to start over on these, but instead of going over them I'll just focus on what worked.

These y-pipes started their lives as 2.5" 45* bends and a 3.5" section of pipe. I started with cutting up the bends to fit together and run parallel to each other on exit. I measured the center of the lower half of the bend, and used that mark as the starting point to run tape line parallel to the upper half of the bend. That would be my cut line on the chop saw.


Then I mirrored this on the other bend, and made the cuts.


With them cut out, I got back under the car and checked to see if the distance between the pipes fit the downpipe outlets, and magically they did! So I tacked them together.


Next I took the 3.5" pipe and squeezed it in my vice until it was an oval with a 2.5" orifice, to match the 2.5" piping.


Then I measured how wide it was and measured that width out on the newly tacked together piping.


Back to the chop saw and she was cut out. And a test fit of the pipes shows what this will look like.





Next I removed the midsection of the exhaust to build it's y-pipe. The piping in this section is even closer together than the downpipes, so the y-pipe would need to be a bit different. First I cut the mid-pipe so the inlets were even, as the system was staggered from the manufacturer.




This time, instead of using the midpoint of the lower half of 45* bends as the starting point for the parallel cut, I used a point about 1/8 of the way across. By pure luck/magic, this worked first try as well! Phew!




Then I took a length of 3.5" pipe and tacked it to a 3.5" vband and once again squeezed the other end in my vice until it was down to 2.5".


Measured the long diameter of the newly formed 3.5" pipe and cut that width off the 2.5" V, to create the second y-pipe.


I tacked everything in place and reinstalled it back under the car to make sure it all fit and looked right.


Once I confirmed it would work, I also tacked the rear slip-on joints in place, and removed the entire rear section for finish welding.





With that out of the way, it was back to the front section, which would surely be more of a PITA. I'd tried cutting the flanges down to size, but they were so thick it was basically not worth continuing. I also needed two new 2.5" bends, as I hadn't accounted for a slight bend right at the downpipes. So I bit the bullet and ordered the N54 specific flanges and accompanying bends from Yonaka. Of course it took like 1.5 weeks to arrive, but yesterday it finally did!


To be continued...

Last edited by proboner; 01-28-2022 at 11:25 AM..
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      01-31-2022, 02:44 AM   #97
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So when we last left off the flanges and 2 additional 30* 2.5" mandrel bends had arrived. I'd already created the front y-pipe, so now it was just a matter of mounting the flanges, cutting the 30* elbows to the correct length, finding the correct placement for the y-pipe so it turns towards the exhaust tunnel correctly, lining all that up with the additional 90* bend sending the exhaust towards the rear of the car once again, and then making sure there's enough space to make that turn and fit the catalytic converter. Easy right? Not really.

I won't get into what a PITA this was, but it took many hours to get it all just right and not create a huge mess for myself. Exhaust systems past, I'd not really paid a ton of attention to gaps between pipes, and it caused a welding nightmare, not to mention it surely flowed like poop. I did my absolute best to have each pipe butt up perfectly and use the fewest pieces of pipe to hopefully help things flow as efficiently as possible. Long story short, here's what I ended up with:










Buttoned it all up, put her down on the ground, and damn. I'm actually super happy with it! Here's the obligatory video I create for every exhaust related thing I do:


It's actually a little quieter than the last iteration, surely due to the added catalytic converter, but IMO it sounds much more refined and of course helps not having leaks everywhere. But the biggest difference is in how it drives. It could just be in my head, but I feel like power delivery is sooo much smoother. It revs more freely and I swear it makes a noticeable amount more torque in mid rpms. Thing is a freight train in 3rd gear starting at 3k-4krpm at 2/3 throttle.

OH! And my custom license plate FINALLY came, as you can see in the videos. It literally came yesterday and I ordered in back in April 2021!


9 month wait for this thing, but I the car is really starting to feel complete. Of course that will pass, haha! I foresee an experiment with trying to remove the cat and see how much louder it is.

Anyways, good times! See you on the next post.

Last edited by proboner; 01-31-2022 at 12:17 PM..
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      01-31-2022, 06:47 PM   #98
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man thats some awesome work! you should be proud of her progressing along nicely. I wish I could weld I was thinking about getting a cheap flux core welder and giving it a go with the varex mufflers. I handy when it comes to normal mechanical work but never welded before.
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      02-01-2022, 02:38 PM   #99
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Quote:
Originally Posted by airwalk776 View Post
man thats some awesome work! you should be proud of her progressing along nicely. I wish I could weld I was thinking about getting a cheap flux core welder and giving it a go with the varex mufflers. I handy when it comes to normal mechanical work but never welded before.
I'd just take it to an exhaust shop and ask them to cut off the stock mufflers and weld the new ones in their place. Probably won't cost much more than it would to buy a cheap mig.
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      02-01-2022, 05:04 PM   #100
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Quote:
Originally Posted by proboner View Post
So when we last left off the flanges and 2 additional 30* 2.5" mandrel bends had arrived. I'd already created the front y-pipe, so now it was just a matter of mounting the flanges, cutting the 30* elbows to the correct length, finding the correct placement for the y-pipe so it turns towards the exhaust tunnel correctly, lining all that up with the additional 90* bend sending the exhaust towards the rear of the car once again, and then making sure there's enough space to make that turn and fit the catalytic converter. Easy right? Not really.

I won't get into what a PITA this was, but it took many hours to get it all just right and not create a huge mess for myself. Exhaust systems past, I'd not really paid a ton of attention to gaps between pipes, and it caused a welding nightmare, not to mention it surely flowed like poop. I did my absolute best to have each pipe butt up perfectly and use the fewest pieces of pipe to hopefully help things flow as efficiently as possible. Long story short, here's what I ended up with:










Buttoned it all up, put her down on the ground, and damn. I'm actually super happy with it! Here's the obligatory video I create for every exhaust related thing I do:


It's actually a little quieter than the last iteration, surely due to the added catalytic converter, but IMO it sounds much more refined and of course helps not having leaks everywhere. But the biggest difference is in how it drives. It could just be in my head, but I feel like power delivery is sooo much smoother. It revs more freely and I swear it makes a noticeable amount more torque in mid rpms. Thing is a freight train in 3rd gear starting at 3k-4krpm at 2/3 throttle.

OH! And my custom license plate FINALLY came, as you can see in the videos. It literally came yesterday and I ordered in back in April 2021!


9 month wait for this thing, but I the car is really starting to feel complete. Of course that will pass, haha! I foresee an experiment with trying to remove the cat and see how much louder it is.

Anyways, good times! See you on the next post.
Nice exhaust work man! Glad that it's coming along!
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      02-02-2022, 04:14 PM   #101
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Thanks! I'm actually super happy with where she's sitting now. I think the license plate really put that cherry on top.
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      02-04-2022, 06:26 PM   #102
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Wait!? Another update? So soon!?

You read it right! In a flurry of excitement over how much I'm enjoying driving the car lately I made a couple impulse buys and one of them showed up today. Carbon fiber mirror covers:


I'd seen pictures of them installed before and they seemed to look good from outside the car, but it always looked like the view from inside the car was atrocious. Specifically, the covers always looked thick and like they were almost too big for the mirrors and had a noticeable lip around the mirror. Well I was pretty excited when I saw how thin they are and how snugly they fit on the mirror.

Affixed the double-sided tape


And they're on! And looking pretty dang good!








For anyone wondering, these are just some ebay specials which cost around $80. My take on this could possibly change in the future, but thus far I feel they're well worth the price. Another update should be popping in early next week. Until then!

Last edited by proboner; 02-05-2022 at 01:47 AM..
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      02-05-2022, 08:04 PM   #103
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And the other surprise also showed up early... a CF trunk lid lip! I am not a lip, spoiler, lip kind of a guy but I keep on having this in the back on my mind and I knew it would just keep gnawing at me until I tried it for myself. It's actually more substantial than I thought it would be based on the pictures and I'd also say even better looking in real life! Still not 100% sold on it, so time will tell.

Arrival


Without


With


Without


With


They included 2 different sized tapes to affix it, which is surprisingly thorough given it was the cheapest one on ebay


Applied tape


Did some measuring to make sure it was centered


Install went... not as well as expected. Not sure if it's because the piece just doesn't fit quite right or if it's just really though to get it lined up with that sticky ass tape on there. Probably a bit of both frankly. Either way I've got it kind of impermanently fitted for the time being and will be spending the next couple weeks deciding its fate.
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      03-20-2022, 06:48 PM   #104
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Well after driving it for several weeks the trunk lip's outcome has been decided... I LOVE IT. It honestly looks so much better than I thought it would, and IMO really adds to the rear of the car. With the front CF lip and side skirts the rear of the car was missing something, and this may be exactly what it was. I did end up pulling it off and changing the install a bit, as it wasn't on quite right. I found the key was to stick the 2 sided tape on the lip where it comes into contact with the rear of the trunk, press it tight, and then just use a few small pieces to attach it on the top. Worked very well. Still deciding if I want to go MSport rear bumper with CF diffuser insert.

In other news, I made another unexpected/exciting purchase the other day... a stock wind deflector! These things are usually VERY expensive, with prices on ebay going for well over $500 if you need to buy all the pieces, which I did. But I ended up finding a used set including the middle deflector, mesh inserts for the roll hoops, the roll hoops themselves, and the mounting hardware, all for $350 shipped. Considering many of those terrible plexiglass aftermarket solutions cost the same, I was quite happy with the pickup!

Fresh out of the box. There are a couple minor blemishes on the screen of the middle section, but you'd literally have to get a foot away and try to find them, to even notice.


The backs of my current hoops, as you may remember from the early days, have been painted with black plastidip and then covered once again with a gunmetal grey plastidip metalizer coat. Would have loved to just reuse them but there are two holes on the new set which are missing from my current set, so opted to make the switch. Unfortunately I made a few mistakes when painting them yesterday so they'll need to be redone, but it'll work for new until I can buy more paint.

Before


Hoop windscreen


New (badly painted) hoop back and hoop windscreen installed


Center screen mount installed


Everything installed but the center portion


And done




Obviously everything is quite dirty. It rained yesterday and she hasn't been washed in a couple weeks. But I'm excited to take her on a top down freeway cruise to see the difference!
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      03-22-2022, 05:29 PM   #105
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Quote:
Originally Posted by proboner View Post
Well after driving it for several weeks the trunk lip's outcome has been decided... I LOVE IT. It honestly looks so much better than I thought it would, and IMO really adds to the rear of the car. With the front CF lip and side skirts the rear of the car was missing something, and this may be exactly what it was. I did end up pulling it off and changing the install a bit, as it wasn't on quite right. I found the key was to stick the 2 sided tape on the lip where it comes into contact with the rear of the trunk, press it tight, and then just use a few small pieces to attach it on the top. Worked very well. Still deciding if I want to go MSport rear bumper with CF diffuser insert.

In other news, I made another unexpected/exciting purchase the other day... a stock wind deflector! These things are usually VERY expensive, with prices on ebay going for well over $500 if you need to buy all the pieces, which I did. But I ended up finding a used set including the middle deflector, mesh inserts for the roll hoops, the roll hoops themselves, and the mounting hardware, all for $350 shipped. Considering many of those terrible plexiglass aftermarket solutions cost the same, I was quite happy with the pickup!

Fresh out of the box. There are a couple minor blemishes on the screen of the middle section, but you'd literally have to get a foot away and try to find them, to even notice.


The backs of my current hoops, as you may remember from the early days, have been painted with black plastidip and then covered once again with a gunmetal grey plastidip metalizer coat. Would have loved to just reuse them but there are two holes on the new set which are missing from my current set, so opted to make the switch. Unfortunately I made a few mistakes when painting them yesterday so they'll need to be redone, but it'll work for new until I can buy more paint.

Before


Hoop windscreen


New (badly painted) hoop back and hoop windscreen installed


Center screen mount installed


Everything installed but the center portion


And done




Obviously everything is quite dirty. It rained yesterday and she hasn't been washed in a couple weeks. But I'm excited to take her on a top down freeway cruise to see the difference!
Nice set you got! Hopefully it would reduce wind noise..
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      03-23-2022, 04:07 PM   #106
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At 350 I’ll take one also !!
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      03-26-2022, 12:54 PM   #107
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At 350 I’ll take one also !!
That's what I said!

Now that it's all said and done though, I really don't feel a difference compared to not having one. Maybe if I did back-to-back testing I would. Oh well!
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      03-27-2022, 10:28 PM   #108
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That's what I said!

Now that it's all said and done though, I really don't feel a difference compared to not having one. Maybe if I did back-to-back testing I would. Oh well!
Good to know I had one one my previous 35is and figured it’s was better to have. On a side note I ended up getting the varex kit for a mustang GT. The kit had two varex mufflers 3” inlet and outlet with 4.5 inch tips, exhaust hangers, valve module with remote and two flanges. Took over to a local exhaust shop and they did a really sweet job with the install. Took about 1.5 hours. Love the sound so far and the quiet mode is really silent.
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      04-22-2022, 06:52 PM   #109
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Nice! Glad to hear you did it!
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      05-05-2022, 11:09 PM   #110
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Nice updates. I noticed your plates first as the page loaded (before I caught up with all your recent mods).

Gotta say, the exhaust setup sounds nice!
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