So I've been running around with my $20 temporary exhaust system on my V6 for about 5 years. I have been watching prices on extractors and weighing up building some myself.

The prices in the US ebay site finally tempted me to go for it. US$63 for the 304 stainless steel (polished) headers. The shipping is unfortunately another US$130, but still pretty cheap I reckon.

Let's just hope they actually arrive

wow they look good
Nice score!!

Bargain !

Geez Wes...do you have to do everything i do? lol..you may remember my pink exhaust..


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but i just bought this off ebay


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$132 + $50 freight and its in oz...you may notice the outlet flange suits a turbo....boostin

Are you going to paint it pink first, it's such a unique and pretty colour for an exhaust

Yeah, ebay rocks for some stuff. I wouldn't be able to buy the raw stainless steel to make the exhaust for the price I paid.

Wes I like how you call 5 years as temporary.

They look nice. Wonder if Suby extractors are getting that chep in the states as well?

Well it was going to be temporary, 5 years ago Isn't that the way it always ends up.

here's some suby headers for US$60 -
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Subaru-WRX-STI-Header_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ33631QQihZ005QQitemZ150222189770QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZW DVW

Rob, forget about the pink exhaust, why you watering your garden from under the car with the green nylex hose?

Quote:

Originally posted by GTMac Rob, forget about the pink exhaust, why you watering your garden from under the car with the green nylex hose?

They arrived today

I'm actually very impressed with the quality











The primary's are welded on the inside and outside of the mounting plate, which is quite good, and then they have any burn-throughs ground back.

The only odd thing is the size of the secondary's, they are 42mm OD the same as the primary's. That doesn't seem to make sense. You can see how they step down in size in the collector flange. The factory exhaust system (at least on the jap KLZE exhaust I have) has 48/49mm secondary's!

So I guess if I want lots of power, I will need to make bigger secondary's.

But for the price, the quality is great.

So I tried to fit the headers this weekend, and ran into some problems.

When fitting them to the car, it turns out there were a few problems;
* the U-bend in the secondaries was too high and pressed against the sump before the flanges mated together
* The flanges weren't flat against each other when they did come together
* The flanges were slightly rotated from each other making bolt fitting very difficult.

Here is what it looked like on the car, you can see the flanges slightly rotated from each other;


Here you can see the flanges aren't flat against each other, and the U-bend is pressed firmly on the sump;


So I went back to the factory secondaries. I cut them up into quite a few pieces and modified them to suit the headers rather than the factory cast iron manifolds. I even kept the balance pipe (which had to be relocated a little);


Here you can see on the factory unit the U-bend and other pipe are all flat in relation to each other (in the one plane), but on the stainless steel unit the U-bend is not flat compared to the other pipes;


So now I have a combination of headers and modified factory secondaries, surely a big improvement on the stock cast iron exhaust manifold;


I haven't taken it for a good test yet, but after a quick drive it did feel a little more unrestricted and did sound a little better.

geez at least you got yours Wes...i'm still waiting and bought off australian ebay! bummer about the fit of yours and the dinky little secondaries but the answer is obvious...fab up some new ones out of 50mm bedheads

You should give your seller bad feed back, mine only took 12days from the US. And I also bought a 12V starter motor from another seller and it only took 7days from the US. They both used registered post so I could track it through the mail system and customs the whole time.

The factory secondaries are bigger than the stainless ones anyway, so I don't really mind that I ended up with those anyway.