tortuga

Cool vids! Hopefully nothing major, but I agree that missing plug electrode is suspect. Boroscope time!

Quote :

I realized it and shifted to D real quick and went on so I started spraying after the shift was completed as planned but then the damn thing didn't upshift to 3rd for some reason so it was just hanging up at 6600rpm (about 100mph) while I was spraying and everything. I have no idea why. Immediately after that run I had a misfire.

Is it possible you shifted to 2nd gear lock-out instead of D?

Ouch. I'd be worried about that crushed plug as well.....

AA wrote:

Is it possible you shifted to 2nd gear lock-out instead of D?

I don't think so 'cause I knew well to go all the way up to D and I listened closely to the in-car video a few times and it sounds like I went through at least two clicks on the shifter.

charlieRobinson wrote:

Did you beat any stangs? wanna see some of out of car race vids!

Actually there were three groups that day: general test&tune, chicago subaru club, chicago mustang club and we all had our own lanes so we never had races between the groups. I beat somebody my first run by quite a bit but I don't know who, the second run I got beaten by a girl (pretty hot) in a low 10 second 'boostinperformance' GTR, 3rd run which i royally f**ked up, I still walked a 4th gen z28 by a good bit. Incidentally our 60ft and 1/4 mph were like exactly the same but when I hit daht nos he was eating my dust hard.. soo cliche but that's exactly what happened haha.

deekster_caddy wrote:

I always, ALWAYS let go of the nitrous when I shift. It's quick - off - shift - on and I know everything will be okay.

Those spark plugs...  umm, you have a wideband O2? What was it during spray?

I was doing that before too. I waited till the car shifted to 2nd and then started spraying then let off before it hit the 2-3shift, then sprayed again after the 2-3shift was completed but I didn't like the lean spike I would always get right after I let off the nitrous plus the trans should have no problem with an extra 75hp or so during shifts. It's built for turbo torque levels. The PCM shouldn't be affected by it either where the nitrous would make it do anything funny. It just see's extra air coming in.

AFR started around 11:1 and creeped up to about 12:1 while I was spraying, no KR but I'm really starting to question if it's catching it. I saw some KR in the first run at the end of 2nd or 3rd gear like 3-4deg which isn't unusual at all but nothing when I cooked two spark plugs spraying nitrous...

This is messier than I thought.
I looked under the hood that day after and I have a very light mist of cv joint grease on the passenger side. I couldn't see where it's coming from but I'll investigate that closer later. It's not that bad. I'm gonna go over to my parents house probably this weekend and stick my dad's boroscope through the spark plug holes and get a look in there. If I see a chip or whatever in one or both of those cylinders then I'll start searching for another motor to pick up and put in over the tail end of winter or so since I seem to be symptom-free currently. The really annoying thing now is I got that noise from my exhaust vband/flex again. I looked under the car this morning and my exhaust is actually hanging lower now. I don't know if the flex partially let go or what cause ive still got the header wrap all up on there. So actually that's more urgent than anything. I'm gonna have to go through all that shit now - pull the headers off, take them somewhere and weld new flex and probably new v-band too. Now the gears in my head are going wild; I might as well get new headers with 1.75" primaries; I want to change the exhaust again to make it quieter - like stock quiet. If it was easy to remove and transport, I'd probably pull a stock exhaust system off a junkyard riv and install it with a cutout pipe and provisions to connect to the headers but I can't see that happening plus I really like the single exit look I have right now a lot. I dunno what ta do.

what 1.75" primaries are you thinking? zzp, pacesetter, or another I dont know about?

Does wideband sensor read AFR with N2O just fine? No differences?

You are probably the hardest core Riv dude I know of, Cody. You're my hero.

the vid i referred to before
if you turn it up you can hear a little of the funny comments at like :20

turtleman wrote:

I'll start searching for another motor to pick up and put in over the tail end of winter or so

charlieRobinson wrote:

what 1.75" primaries are you thinking? zzp, pacesetter, or another I dont know about?

Does wideband sensor read AFR with N2O just fine? No differences?

You are probably the hardest core Riv dude I know of, Cody. You're my hero.

I'm thrilled to hear my dirty turtle matters inspire somebody!
The wideband will read with N2O ok but it is skewed a little. The higher the N2O content, the more skewed. At my level, It should be pretty reliable. But for example if you had an n/a engine that makes 200hp and sprayed a 200shot at it, it'd be very skewed.
As for the headers I'm just mentally brainstorming

I ordered zzp headers today so I'll let you know how that all goes Charlie whenever I get to installing them. It woulda been nice If I could hold off till the black friday deals but I'm not sure the car can wait that long not to mention me. I hate driving around with this exhaust leak and wondering if a good bump will take out my flex or v-band welds. I got the basic shorty downpipe and I'm going to weld a standard dump pipe right to the end and run a quieter muffler right there I think. I'm just gonna cap off the dump for now and figure out something to quickly actuate a dump valve in the future. I'm gonna test out a Walker 17809 muffler and if it's quieter than the one I have now I'll use it. If not, then I'm probably gonna go back to the GM OEM truck style muffler like I had all the way at the back before which would require some elbow grease at the exhaust shop to install. I'm gonna keep the rear half of the exhaust system untouched since I like it.

Get an electric cutout for the exhaust!

deekster_caddy wrote:

Get an electric cutout for the exhaust!

Yeah, but be clever about it and hide it in a muffler or something. Don't want the inspection shops to find out.

What about a muffler with butterfly valves in it? Something like a Varex or even adapt a used setup off of a Corvette. That way you could get your quiet exhaust for day to day driving and then when you get to a track just open up the valves and go.

matt270avian wrote:

deekster_caddy wrote:

Get an electric cutout for the exhaust!

Yeah, but be clever about it and hide it in a muffler or something. Don't want the inspection shops to find out.

There's nothing technically illegal about having one as long as it's closed!

deekster_caddy wrote:

There's nothing technically illegal about having one as long as it's closed!

Not everywhere. For example, here in MD they are explicitly illegal last I checked.

I had an electric cutout before on the car but it was way in back. Two things I didn't like about it - sometimes it would stick open (not want to close) and if that was just because of their cruddy wiring solution I could have fixed it but the other thing I didn't like was it took a good 3-4 sec to open or close. I kinda want something that responds faster. I'm thinking about either making something vacuum actuated like the supercharger bbv or sticking a spare northstar tb on it - that'd be pretty funny
I don't have any visual smog inspection where I am so that's not an issue or i'd already be in trouble with no cat.

I have basically all the exhaust stuff. I could nearly hang it myself with clamps but I will take it to get welded at a shop once I get the new headers in.


The zzp headers look solid. I'm a fan of the flex and stuff being on the downpipe so you can replace it if it goes out without dealing with the headers. That muffler as I mentioned before I'm gonna test before I take the car in to get welded up. Its internal construction is basically a factory style turbo and if it's quieter than the Magnaflow XL turbo I have in that place now, I'll keep it. I like the size - should have good ground/floor clearance and the offset exit should point right at the entry side of that bend at the back for the battery. That section will have to be reworked a little by an exhaust shop but if it goes per my plans, it'll be really nice and not expensive. Well the zzp headers of course are expensive.

DANG i want them headers.

Waiting to snipe on that zzp black friday deal, though

You going to wrap them headers up all nice like?

Cody, are you going to put an electric cutout on the other side of the Y after the d pipe?

Charlie I know I just saw someone on club gp I think with zzp headers for sale 400 of course Right after i buy them new

turtleman wrote:

Charlie I know I just saw someone on club gp I think with zzp headers for sale 400 of course Right after i buy them new

Thanks for the heads up!

I sent the dude a PM!

Let us know how loud it is with that new muffler. I'm thinking about pulling off my glasspacks and re-purposing them elsewhere....

I got the headers swapped today. It wasn't too bad besides the trans dipstick tube. I started mocking up the revised exhaust section and it's looking pretty good. I could pretty much throw clamps on it and make it done but I need to go somewhere to get a bung welded in for the wideband anyway so I'll have them weld the stuff up and maybe run a little pipe - we'll see. I'll see if it's quieter with that new muffler tomorrow when I get the exhaust temporarily fitted together for a test. The plan is if I like it I'll jimmy rig something just to drive it to a shop and finish it all permanently (which might require some waiting if i'm picky about who does it) and if I don't like the muffler, i'll have to pick up a different one that's less dimensionally favorable. I took some pictures of the headers and stuff for documentation/comparison purposes.





looking into the downpipe



I like the downpipe location. It's got plenty of clearance from the sway bar and the drop height is perfect. It's about even with the sway bar. My old headers hung down about 3 inches below the sway bar.

Overall, I really like the features of the zzp headers. Crossover pipe integrated to the rear header: no trouble to install and one less connection. I definitely like the downpipe flange being close to the header merge instead of extended out so you have segregation and you can replace the flex without touching the headers themselves. (the main reason I had to get into this project in the first place). I like that I don't need an extension for the o2 sensor anymore even though it's really only reading the front bank and I love the 2.5" crossover pipe vs 2.25" on the SLP style. I almost like that even better than the larger primaries.

Now for the trouble


Naturally I pulled the trans dipstick tube to make getting the rear header up to the motor easy and then when I had the header in I couldn't get the dipstick tube back down. I believe I have a stock w body dipstick tube from my old header install because it fit with those headers. I don't have my stock tube anymore to check.
I tried bending my dipstick tube to clear the crossover pipe but it was just not happening. I screwed up the tube but got nowhere with getting it to fit so I just measured it and cut it to put a section of hose on it to serve as a flexible dipstick holder. It'll work for now until I do something nicer.



As of now the headers or fully installed. Tomorrow I play with the rest of the exhaust.

matt270avian wrote:

You going to wrap them headers up all nice like?

I'll probably do that when/if I replace the engine. I kinda want to now but I also wanna see how these headers visually age and stuff first compared to the first set of headers of different material, plus I didn't want to add more things to this operation right now - I have enough to do in a short time lol

matt270avian wrote:

Let us know how loud it is with that new muffler. I'm thinking about pulling off my glasspacks and re-purposing them elsewhere....

As for the muffler, it basically went from
this in a 7x30 round case
to this in an 4x9x24 oval case

It is a step quieter I'd say. If they had this same muffler size in a 'quietflow3' or whatever with the 3-tube internal design I would'a went for that for more quiet but this was the only option in that size. It's hard to give you a good description of sound level because I'm comparing to the magnaflow xlturbo I took off but this muffler is fairly similar sounding. Idle is quieter and the subtle tinny noise local to the muffler that the magnaflow produced is pretty much non existent on this one. The strong 1500-2000rpm tone still comes through almost the same as before but above and below that cruising it's practically silent. Drone is pretty minimal.

I took the car into a shop I know to get all my crap welded up and some new pipe run at the back so it's all nicelike. The muffler is actually too wide to fit all the way up into the recess with the heat shields and stuff but it still fits high enough to have a very comfortable amount of ground clearance - much better than the 7" round magnaflow which hung down but I rarely had issue with.







The guy kinda exaggerated that new s-bend a lot more than necessary since the muffler outlet is very close to where you'd want it at that point but what are you gonna do - I don't have a welder or a 3" pipe bender so it is what it is. Overall I'm happy with the result. It's a notch quieter than before and everything should last a long time or at least long enough for me to change it again lol. I've said 'this is the last one' plenty of times already.


the new headers after like 10mi - bronzed a little with the heating
I had to bend up that far right spark plug boot a little bit so it wouldn't touch that primary