Help? Dead cat!!
 

hi this might be the most noob question on the forum so please be kind.

i have an 04 6MT rx8 and my cat is on its last leg, ive been researching possible replacements and keep seeing midpipes and de catted down pipes?
i was looking into getting a midpipe.

my question is, can i replace the area with my dead cat with a midpipe to my stock exhaust or do i need another part?:scratchhe

like i said,.:Freak_ani
please be kind

When you remove the cat and put something else there, that is a "cat delete". Straight pipe, midpipe, test pipe, and race pipe are all roughly the same thing, a pipe installed in place of the cat. Down pipes are usually referred to in connection with a turbo setup, so you can ignore those.

The main things to keep in mind are:
- If it's a straight through basic tube, it will be cheap but have zero noise control, and it will bring out the most possible power with all the cruising drone and on-power rasp that a rotary produces. Most people absolutely hate it, including law enforcement.
- If has ANY noise control involved, the price goes up. The higher it goes, the better quality the pipe will be. However, most pipes use packing like steel wool to deaden the sound. Find out if the pipe you are looking at has packing, and if it does, stay away. All packing is designed for piston engines and rotaries run FAR hotter and melt or blow out the packing VERY quickly. Some as fast as a few hundred miles.



I personally use the BHR midpipe, and hands down recommend it over anything else. All the noise control, build quality, and customer support without any of the drone, rasp, or failures. Over 27,000 miles on it with zero issues. It is the most expensive pipe out there, but TOTALLY worth it. You are just flushing money down the drain with the packing options. 1 other pipe has resonators instead of packing, but the price drop isn't significant and it drones like crazy.

thank you :)

or .... you could just knock out the material in the cat and voila !
Problem solved at zero expense.

What I did. My rac pipe had too much rasp:scared:

The OP and I have continued the conversation in PMs. No need to troll the thread :)

That wasn't a troll pic. It was just a funny pic, related to the title of the thread :dunno:

I'm just pre-empting lurkers then :)

Funny is for the Lounge. In the forums, troll and funny can be had to distinguish.

Normally I'd condider you to be a halfway intelligent person, but this is why I was shocked to read such ignorance from you. There are packing materials that are not suitable for rotary use, but there are also packing materials that are completely suitable for a rotary application. Maybe you drank a gallon of wankleberry koolaid or smoked a bowl on the BS pipe before writing this, because that's the only way to explain this ludicrous commentary. Not that a bunch of clueless noobs would know any better ...

Team,

Logically, I can accept that. However, I am only aware of 2 pipes that use no packing, and every single other pipe designed and produced for the RX-8 that I am aware of suffers from terminal failure of the interior packing within a few thousand miles. At no point can I recommend to anyone that they waste their money in such a way. If there is such a pipe that uses packing designed for our high heat that I can recommend as an alternative to newbies the only remaining logical possibilities are that it is not publicly marketed or is custom built on demand.

If you are aware of something that invalidates a component of my current knowledge and improves what I know, I'd like to become educated as well.

(Humorously enough, googling "midpipe packing options for rotaries" returns this very thread as the top result.)



Additionally, you should know that your last line is very much how I take many of my newbie responses. Excluding this particular topic, I normally do tailor my responses to newbies to what may be considered by some purists as "incorrect." Intentionally. Because people often have to learn their alphabet before they can spell. Most newbies simply can not absorb the information load instantly needed to understand every nuance or tiny factor. There is an exception to every generalization we make about our car, but when a newbie is so clueless as to not even know that their car might be different, we start with generalizations, with basic concepts, with trying to frame their mind around acceptable limits and help them understand the basic environment they are dealing with.

Once they understand that and have a foundation to start working off of, then we can start throwing the curveballs, the exceptions, the "oh you actually can do that, but this laundry list of work is needed first", etc...


As for this topic, it is the sum of my knowledge in this particular area, but I am more than happy to expand it. Whether or not I include additional pipes or materials in my recommendation will depend on how easy it is to obtain for someone that literally didn't know that there are only 3 main pieces to the exhaust system, or what they were even called.