Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hi all,

this may be a bit of a such eggs to some of you, but nonetheless, I have been quite surprised by the effect of upgrading my exhaust.

I fitted an Nismo exhaust, 80m with two straight through mufflers, to quieten my car down to legal, from the N1 that was fitted, 80mm, small final muffler, no middle resonator.

At the time I was making around 200rwkw, and noticed an increase in lag and drop in power, but nothing overly dramatic.

Later I fitted a HKS 303756T with a 0.61 turbine AR, and as expected, a huge increase in power, around 256rwkw at 1 bar with an interim tune, as I was doing cams and a couple of other things.

Boost came on too hard at 3000rpm and even in 4th gear, with light throttle, the car would go sideways at 100kph, when boost hit.

To combat this, and to reduce back pressure/free up top end, I went to a 0.87 turbine housing. HUGE lag, over 5000rpm until 1 bar was achieved. I was very disappointed, as other cars running similar combos were no where as laggy as this.

The first thing I blamed was my custom manifold, as it was the only 'unknown' quantity on my car. I took the car to be dynoed, it now made 285rwkw at 1.2bar, and 270rwkw at 1.1 bar, but the lag was still up around 4800rpm for 1 bar. Better but by no means what it 'should' be. At 1.5 bar I only made 300rwkw, and at 1.7 bar 309rwkw and power dropped off between 7000 and 7500rpm.

People I know who have run these turbos, told me that their experience was very different, with a massive increase in power for every 0.1 bar of boost being wound in above 1.2bar. In once case on an SR20, making 30rwkw more going from 1.3 to 1.4bar.

I now suspected the car was being choked, so went off to get a new catback. I found a HKS Super Dragger 90mm, small centre resi, to 'try' and see if it resulted in much improvement.

It was a dramatic improvement.

things I found

- boost comes in 700rpm earlier

- off boost is alot crisper

- off boost, it is now possible to drive at 50kmh in 4th gear, and the car can now be driven under 2700rpm all day - very smooth (and nice and quiet if plods are around)

- economy has improved, from 190-250kms for 50L fuel I am now up to 170km and only just made 1/2 tank!

- The car is so much snappier to drive, and really brings a grin to my face every time I get in the drivers seat.

- It would appear that an exhaust system will flow reasonably until a flow is reached where back pressure starts killing power.

- It also seems that the bigger the turbine housing, the more imperative that the exhaust be less restrictive.

- my wastegate held 1.7 bar no probs with the nismo exhaust, now it wont allow more than 1.3-1.4bar. The (lack of) back pressure seems to be making the solenoid, and wastegate spring work harder (soft spring)???? but the car pulls alot harder at that boost pressure than 1.7bar before:)

The car isnt getting a retune until I replace the intercooler to plenum pipe (2 1/2 inch, being upgraded to 3 inch) as I am sure this is something of a restriction too, and hope for a further improvement. Also, it seems I need to upgrade my wastegate spring to around a 1bar unit, or I wont be able to get much more boost.

Bottom line, DONT underestimate the importance of a well built, free flowing exhaust especially when you start making a bit more power than stock:)

Hope you find this interesting, as I cannot believe the massive difference just changing my cat back has made:D and remember, a noisy exhaust is your friend:p

  • Replies 54
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Also, it seems I need to upgrade my wastegate spring to around a 1bar unit, or I wont be able to get much more boost.

What is the std spring set to? Would make your boost controller work a lot less hard if you upped it as well. Nic report mate, thanks.

Adrian

2rismo, I have to change the spring, as its external gate. It has been as low as 10psi without spiking, so perhaps less than 10psi spring.

I would have liked to do a before/after, but I would sooner spend the money it would cost on mods:) Plus, I had access to a couple of different cat back systems to try and see how things went.

Dean, to reiterate, meow:p

Thanks Paul, not quite out of the woods yet, but nearly there:) some people just have to learn the hard way - makes it more fun I spose, just gets a bit expensive.

I think your small turbine housing is helping alot too, I may end up stepping down to 0.73 - have to see how it all goes - if I can get power to 8000rpm without dropping, I will stay with the housing I have. Currently (before this exhaust anyways) it starts dropping off at around 7200rpm.

Steve,

I still remember the Tilbrooks dyno day a yr or so back when Spoolin's (SAU nick) car ran a very low 219rwkw, very low considering his GTS25t had serious mods ex-Japan. The exhaust had a shitty comp cat & backyard cat back section to keep it quiet. The lads replaced the cat with a pipe & fitted the original Jap brand name system (came with the car ex Japan) The car went back on the dyno with tune & set boost level untouched. It ran 282rwkw.

Perfect example of how much difference an exhaust can make!

The smallest part of my exhaust is the shitty 2.5" cat used for compliance. I have always wondered how much difference a 3" straight through pipe would make, the only thing stopping me (apart from the fine) is the noise level. With the N1 system my car is very noisy already and I dont want to draw more attention than I have already to the cops.

rob77, I know someone who has a pipe only hanging off the back of an SR20, and its acutally not alot louder than the N1 system, if at all. Only difference is it sounds a bit more aressive if you know what I mean.

He also has an apexi flap in, and with it shut, makes less noise than a N1 system - but still has its pretty aggressive note.

HKS make some damn good exhausts, in fact most of the japanese systems are pretty good - and the aussie ones that can be fabbed up lack a lot of the refinement. I think one of the reasons my car runs so smoothly is simply because of a nice exhaust setup.

yeah.. definitely whatsisname! Ok...this is a whole different type of car, but same concepts apply. My brothers car is an old XF which i was driving around for a few weeks while my skyline was in the shop. It was basically making hardly *any* power, and would struggle up hills, or basically under any attempt at accelerating fast. Basically we thought the rings or something had gone and the engine was on its death bed. Somebody recommend we should change the cat, we did and TOTALLY different car. Power came right back again, and actually went pretty hard for an old 250c.u. 4.1L. So basically the totally clogged cat was killing the backpressure and starving the whole engine of any power.

Lifespan of a cat is 10 years or so, so probably about now the old factory cat is starting to get restrictive on a skyline, if it hasn't been changed.

  • 2 months later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Very decent bit of kit. Definitely black it out I reckon.  
    • Because people who want that are buying euros. The people with the money to buy the aftermarket heads and blocks aren’t interested in efficiency or making -7 power, they’re making well over 1,000hp and pretty much only drive them at full throttle  best way to way make money is know your customer base and what they want and don’t spend money making things they don’t want. 
    • It's not, but it does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity regardless. For example, what if the cylinder head was redesigned to fit a GDI fuel system? It's worth like two full points of compression ratio when looking at modern GDI turbo vs PFI turbo. I'm pretty reliably surprised at how much less turbo it takes to make similar power out of a modern engine vs something like an RB26. Something with roughly the same dimensions as a -7 on an S55 is making absolutely silly power numbers compared to an RB26. I know there's a ton of power loss from things like high tension rings, high viscosity oil, clutch fan, AWD standby loss, etc but it's something like 700 whp in an F80 M3 vs 400 whp in an R33 GTR. The stock TF035HL4W turbos in an F80 M3 are really rather dinky little things and that's enough to get 400 whp at 18 psi. This just seems unwise no? I thought the general approach is if you aren't knock limited the MFB50 should be held constant through the RPM range. So more timing with RPM, but less timing with more cylinder filling. A VE-based table should accordingly inverse the VE curve of the engine.
    • I've seen tunes from big name workshops with cars making in excess of 700kW and one thing that stood out to me, is that noone is bothering with torque management. Everyone is throwing in as much timing as the motor can take for a pull. Sure that yields pretty numbers on a dyno, but it's not keeping these motors together for more than a few squirts down the straight without blowing coolant or head gaskets. If tuners, paid a bit more attention and took timing out in the mid range, managed boost a bit better, you'll probably see less motors grenading. Not to name names, or anything like that, but I've seen a tune, from a pretty wild GT-R from a big name tuner and I was but perplexed on the amount of timing jammed into it. You would have expected a quite a bit less timing at peak torque versus near the limiter, but there was literally 3 degrees of difference. Sure you want to make as much as possible throughout the RPM range, but why? At the expense of blowing motors? Anyhow I think we've gone off topic enough once again lol.
    • Because that’s not what any of them are building these heads or blocks for. It’s to hold over over 1000hp at the wheels without breaking and none of that stuff is required to make power 
×
×
  • Create New...