Anyone know this frontpipe?

[sunsetR33]

Hi all.

So I have my GTR on the lift and have been working on it a few days and yesterday I unpacked the frontpipe that was wrapped with heat wrap stuff, because part of it was breaking down and soaked in oil. Noticed that the pipe itself does not actually look like a Mines, despite it supposedly being a Mines. But I could not find any fronpipe online that looks exacly like his, and I don't think it is a custom one. My amateur measurement also showed the two pipes are about equal length, so maybe this is just an old version of the Mines pipe?

Would appreciate insight on this by the enlightened folks.


greetings from Germany

Edited April 9 by sunsetR33

[Murray_Calavera]

Is this a trivia question or is there an issue you'd like help with? 

[sunsetR33]

25 minutes ago, Murray_Calavera said:

Is this a trivia question or is there an issue you'd like help with? 

No I actually want to know if this pipe exists or existed under any manufacturer, it may cause legal issues if I have different exhaust parts under the car than in my papers.

[GTSBoy]

So, weld a plate with the Mines logo laser cut into it, onto it.

Instant Mines pipes, whether they were or weren't originally.

[sunsetR33]

5 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

So, weld a plate with the Mines logo laser cut into it, onto it.

Instant Mines pipes, whether they were or weren't originally.

Sound logic, but in actuality way more illegal than just having the wrong pipe. Normally, doing something like that would be forgery. Meaning you may have certain documentation for vehicle parts, but the actual parts are different ones and you just assign them the numbers and badging from the documents. But nevermind that.

Nonetheless, I AM curious if this pipe was ever made by any official manufacturer this way, because I honestly am not familiar with this pipe layout and shape.

As I will be putting on the HKS Silent Hi Power once my exhaust gaskets arrive, as long as it sounds right I will just roll with this front pipe. I can always order the actual Mines part if I run into legal issues. It would be an unnecessary expense as there is lots of other problems I have on this car as of now.

[TurboTapin]

2 hours ago, sunsetR33 said:

Sound logic, but in actuality way more illegal than just having the wrong pipe. Normally, doing something like that would be forgery. Meaning you may have certain documentation for vehicle parts, but the actual parts are different ones and you just assign them the numbers and badging from the documents. But nevermind that.

You must be fun at parties. 

[sunsetR33]

8 minutes ago, TurboTapin said:

You must be fun at parties. 

Say that to the guy that is going to fail your inspection or tow your car for illegal exhaust modifications.
If you have anything else useful to say, please go tell your wall.

Edited April 9 by sunsetR33

[TurboTapin]

31 minutes ago, sunsetR33 said:

Say that to the guy that is going to fail your inspection or tow your car for illegal exhaust modifications.
If you have anything else useful to say, please go tell your wall.

As useful as you explaining what forgery is... But then again, I wasn't aware your inspectors were also forensic experts and inspect nameplates on each component to confirm everything is original. They must inspect roughly 3 cars a year at that rate. You're right though, my comment doesn't help you in anyway, so I'll go talk to my wall now. Cheers. 

Edited April 9 by TurboTapin

[sunsetR33]

9 minutes ago, TurboTapin said:

As useful as you explaining what forgery is... But then again, I wasn't aware your inspectors were also forensic experts and inspect nameplates on each component to confirm everything is original. They must inspect roughly 3 cars a year at that rate. You're right though, my comment doesn't help you in anyway, so I'll go talk to my wall now. Cheers. 

The inspectors are not forensic by any means but if you forge your documents and/or badgings on vehicle parts and are found out, the consequences are just far bigger than if you just run illegal parts. And their job quite literally is to cross reference what parts you got installed and what your papers say you got. Something as silly as your suspension being 1mm too low will fail you.
Nonetheless I asked if someone knew the damn pipe and I certainly did not ask for smartassery or underhanded comments, no idea why you need to be told this. Great way to waste both our time.

Edited April 9 by sunsetR33

[Murray_Calavera]

@sunsetR33

There is obviously a huge culture gap here. There is nothing in place like this in Australia, where if you fit a Mines branded pipe and later replace it with a Jun branded pipe, both pipes are essentially identical - BAM - huge penalties! Where is the Mines pipe?? You can't have a Jun pipe when you said you had a Mines pipe! 

Makes no sense to me. Surely makes no sense to anyone else here either. 

I'm sure a lot of us would agree that our registration/engineering system is pretty stupid at times, but it's not that stupid. 

***

More serious question here. If you replace a factory rubber hose with a silicone hose, is the car illegally on the road now? Does it become legal if you have certification of what brand the silicone hose is? Then would it become illegal again if you replaced that silicone hose with a difference brand of silicone hose? And then would it become legal again if you had certification of the new brand of silicone hose? 

I really want to know that answer to that question. 

[Duncan]

I don't know what those pipes are, but I'd say there is a good chance they are old school Japanese tuner because they are equal length and nicely made. Maybe someone like @Rezz who has direct access to japanese history might be able to help.

Even so, I'm not sure what inspectors could check it to, they presumably are googling 30 year old japanese stuff same as us.

[joshuaho96]

6 hours ago, TurboTapin said:

As useful as you explaining what forgery is... But then again, I wasn't aware your inspectors were also forensic experts and inspect nameplates on each component to confirm everything is original. They must inspect roughly 3 cars a year at that rate. You're right though, my comment doesn't help you in anyway, so I'll go talk to my wall now. Cheers. 

Somehow we've reenacted this video completely seriously: 

 

[TurboTapin]

51 minutes ago, joshuaho96 said:

Somehow we've reenacted this video completely seriously: 

 

Hahaha wow that was dead on! 🤣 

[Rezz]

On 09/04/2025 at 4:02 PM, sunsetR33 said:

 But I could not find any fronpipe online that looks exacly like his, and I don't think it is a custom one. My amateur measurement also showed the two pipes are about equal length, so maybe this is just an old version of the Mines pipe?

After a fairly extensive search using Japanese terms and checking Minkara etc, I couldn't find anything even close to your front pipe in the photos. I'm no expert but the two pipes merge really close to the flange connected to the catalytic converter which is rather unique from what I've seen, which makes me think it's more than likely a custom front pipe.

The welds and 'more pipe sections than usual for a brand name pipe' makes it seem like a custom one. 

Here's some photos of an old Mine's front pipe. You can see that it's just 4 pipe sections as opposed to 6, and arguably looks more like a 'production' front pipe:

[GTSBoy]

But there's the archetype for the name plate!

Here's my view on that stupid TÜV ruleset.

• Buy a brand name aftermarket piece of equipment. In this case, the Mines front pipe we're talking about.
• Get it TÜV certified on the car.
• Damage the underside of it, say on a speed bump.
• Cut out the damaged section, replace with fresh metal.
• (For the sake of the argument only), continue doing that to the whole pipe until it is all gone, replaced with new metal.
• Is this grandfather's axe still the same front pipe? The design hasn't changed (much). The pipe walls are in the same places. The flanges are in the same places. It is functionally identical.
• How does this differ from a pipe that is ever so slightly different in fabrication (ie the number of welds in it, a few mm here and there in terms of where the pipes run, are joined, etc)? Anyone with 0.5% of a brain can see that there is absolutely no way that the performance (power, environmental aspects, noise, etc etc) of it can be any different than the genuine Mines pipe.
• Maybe even Mines made 2 versions of this design, with the same differences. How would anyone (say a TÜV inspector) ever be able to differentiate between them?
• And yet, they are so bloody anally retentive about this stuff. Mad.

How upset would they be if you had the wrong spring washers on the flanges?

[sunsetR33]

8 hours ago, Murray_Calavera said:

@sunsetR33

There is obviously a huge culture gap here. There is nothing in place like this in Australia, where if you fit a Mines branded pipe and later replace it with a Jun branded pipe, both pipes are essentially identical - BAM - huge penalties! Where is the Mines pipe?? You can't have a Jun pipe when you said you had a Mines pipe! 

Makes no sense to me. Surely makes no sense to anyone else here either. 

I'm sure a lot of us would agree that our registration/engineering system is pretty stupid at times, but it's not that stupid. 

***

More serious question here. If you replace a factory rubber hose with a silicone hose, is the car illegally on the road now? Does it become legal if you have certification of what brand the silicone hose is? Then would it become illegal again if you replaced that silicone hose with a difference brand of silicone hose? And then would it become legal again if you had certification of the new brand of silicone hose? 

I really want to know that answer to that question. 

See this is a really tricky topic as technically the same rules apply to all cars but for cars but there is a difference. If you want to modify a car like the Skyline which never existed here you have a bit more freedom as they do not adhere to EU specs anyway. Any modification you do has to be in dividually checked anyway so as long as one of the inspectors think it's ok and within the TÜV ruleset you can get stuff like a top secret rear diffuser put in your papers. Which frankly would need a shitload of tests and certificates for EU spec cars, like a 2010 BMW M3 for example. But if you DO run these tests and all tests come out ok (safety stuff for the most part) there is no problem running such a part legally. It's just way too expensive to do for a single person on one car.
The most touchy parts are emissions related mods, like an exhaust, turbos, air intakes. If it makes noise or alters the carbon emissions it's essentially illegal until you prove it's not. Meaning it doesn't exceed noise limits or have worse carbon emissions.
I'd say for hoses if you replace them same same it doesn't matter what material they are or what brand you use. Same for nuts and bolts usually, they won't go and specifically check that your water hoses and some bolts are 100% OEM parts, that is nonsense.

[sunsetR33]

8 hours ago, Duncan said:

I don't know what those pipes are, but I'd say there is a good chance they are old school Japanese tuner because they are equal length and nicely made. Maybe someone like @Rezz who has direct access to japanese history might be able to help.

Even so, I'm not sure what inspectors could check it to, they presumably are googling 30 year old japanese stuff same as us.

The issue is more the fact that there is inspectors that deal with japanese cars a lot and they might know what a real Mines pipe looks like. And then they're gonna get antsy and not pass your car. But I'd have to talk to one of them about this, because you know as well as me that it's just a damn pipe and it effectively doesn't do anything. As I need to have my GT2860s and my exhaust setup (and the increase in HP) TÜV'd anyways maybe they can just correct the entry in the papers or assign a badge to the front pipe. I'm no expert either though, will inquire about this.
 

 

4 hours ago, Rezz said:

After a fairly extensive search using Japanese terms and checking Minkara etc, I couldn't find anything even close to your front pipe in the photos. I'm no expert but the two pipes merge really close to the flange connected to the catalytic converter which is rather unique from what I've seen, which makes me think it's more than likely a custom front pipe.

The welds and 'more pipe sections than usual for a brand name pipe' makes it seem like a custom one. 

Thanks for the insight.
Not sure if having a custom made pipe is good or not. Will find out in due time I suppose. Would be kind of funny if this was made in Germany though.

[Murray_Calavera]

6 minutes ago, sunsetR33 said:

I'd say for hoses if you replace them same same it doesn't matter what material they are or what brand you use.

Would this not be the same for the exhaust you've posted up? 

If your exhaust volume and emissions are fine, why does the brand of pipe matter? 

[sunsetR33]

3 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

But there's the archetype for the name plate!

Here's my view on that stupid TÜV ruleset.

• Buy a brand name aftermarket piece of equipment. In this case, the Mines front pipe we're talking about.
• Get it TÜV certified on the car.
• Damage the underside of it, say on a speed bump.
• Cut out the damaged section, replace with fresh metal.
• (For the sake of the argument only), continue doing that to the whole pipe until it is all gone, replaced with new metal.
• Is this grandfather's axe still the same front pipe? The design hasn't changed (much). The pipe walls are in the same places. The flanges are in the same places. It is functionally identical.
• How does this differ from a pipe that is ever so slightly different in fabrication (ie the number of welds in it, a few mm here and there in terms of where the pipes run, are joined, etc)? Anyone with 0.5% of a brain can see that there is absolutely no way that the performance (power, environmental aspects, noise, etc etc) of it can be any different than the genuine Mines pipe.
• Maybe even Mines made 2 versions of this design, with the same differences. How would anyone (say a TÜV inspector) ever be able to differentiate between them?
• And yet, they are so bloody anally retentive about this stuff. Mad.

How upset would they be if you had the wrong spring washers on the flanges?

The fasteners to the pipe are not subject to TÜV I guess, if we really start putting nuts and bolts through technical tests I'm going to hang the people responsible and then myself.
Usually on a modern-ish EU normed car, you would just replace the pipe. Because if you start hacking away at it and welding new pieces on the cops will definitely find a reason to tow your car. That is just how it is sadly. On old cars and imports with no clear "standard" stuff like that won't matter too much. Most cops or inspectors probably won't even really know what they are looking at. But there is experts for this stuff even among cops, and some of them know the rules to a T and even have extensive knowledge about many vehicles.
For "just a pipe" to be legal it usually is included in a set of parts, like a complete intake kit or a full exhaust. For example my exhaust needs to pass a noise test, meaning they have a standardized test track with a set of instructions and they run the car through there 3x for an average noise value that is 75dB(a) at point x of the test track. If it's above that, fail. For a turbo setup to be put in your papers you have to do dyno runs, emissions testing etc. So quite costly

[sunsetR33]

14 minutes ago, Murray_Calavera said:

Would this not be the same for the exhaust you've posted up? 

If your exhaust volume and emissions are fine, why does the brand of pipe matter? 

Because all parts that are put into your papers usually are assigned a badging if they did not come with one. So other people can just check that badging to tell if it is the parts your papes outline. But my pipe has NOTHING on it whatsoever. No idea why this even passed as a Mines pipe to begin with. I see this going two ways:
-nobody cares and it's a non-issue, but that is unlikely
-the pipe will just have to be assigned a bagding, for sake of argument, a Mines logo, and the papers corrected accordingly

If it interests you I will post what the actual solution ended up being. All I care about is that it has to sound equal length and nobody can screw me later on because of a pipe being illegal.