Intake VS Exhaust VS Cat
 

I just ordered the Revi intake today (go me :D ). I really want to be able to feel a difference, and i dont care about mileage. For anyone who has an intake/exhaust/cat either of those, one, all, or none, what do you think will give the most performance, an intake, exhaust, or changing the catalytic converter (not to a straight through midpipe, just to another high flow cat)? I dont care about the sound the intake makes, but i DO care about power. I'm planning on getting a used exhaust (a light one but not titanium) and was wondering if there were any additional benefits of having an intake and an exhaust. Since the engine will be getting more air, maybe it will be able to release more too??? Any advice would be nice (nice rhyme at the end eh?)
Thanks

Additionally, is a midpipe much louder than a catalytic converter? I heard it will only give 1-2 more hp than a high flow cat.

i have both exhaust midpipe and intake all put on at different times and with the midpipe i felt the most power increase out of all of them.

Same here...With the catalytic converter i felt the biggere difference..I first installed greddy sp2 catback,then i installed rb revi and before some days i installed canzoomer midp-4 high flow cat....

Great package man...Just Great...Now i want the rb ram air when it hits the market and i am done with the small na renesis before i go fi!! :D

yea im looking to upgrade my k&n typhoon intake to the rb soon. i think ill wait for the ram air to come out so i can do the whole ram air/intake package at once. does anyone know when the ram air is suppose to be released and what it will look like?

for those of you who have any of the mods (especially all 3), does the car feel faster? If so, how much faster?

The car definately feels faster..A lot i can see..But be carefull i said "feels" not "is"!!!

Yes, the car is faster. I took a ride in a new stock 8, and they are very slow compared to mine.

I have the REVi intake and racing beat exhaust. After installing them I added the Canzoomer with mid-pipe and resonator. Definitely noticed a big difference - especially after the Canzoomer was installed and tuned. The car is much stronger after 6000 rpm, and pulls all the way to 9000! Sounds great as well.

all those mods add power, but you'd probably feel a lightenned flywheel more than all 3 even though it adds no power, just frees it up.

I strongly disagree with that statement! I noticed the installation of my REVi MUCH more than the flywheel install.

Besides the flywheel does result in more HP reaching the rear wheels. That's equivalent to adding power to the crank even though its not. I'd be extatic if all I could do is reduce those enormous drive train losses.

I recently got the rp midpipe and the performance gain is awsome. You can definately feel it pull harder from 5k all the way up to 9k. If you worried about emissions you can always swap it to the original cat, which only takes around a hour to do.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
I'm not knocking adding intake/cat/exhaust at all. It's all stuff I plan to do myself.

You've got to think about this though:
Racing beat claims that it adds at most 5.8hp over stock.
You didn't add it to a stock car, so that claim doesn't apply to you. You added it to a car that is already modified with a lighter flywheel and possibly an exhaust. The potential gain is probably magnified by those two factors, so it feels as if you gained more with the intake, but you may just be compounding your previous gains with it.
Then again, i could be totally insane.

To really know which makes more of a difference, you'd need to calculate the average RWHP gained from both individually and look at the difference. The reason why I say a flywheel is more noticable is not because of the horsepower restored to the rear wheels, but because of the way the car revs afterwards. Your time to redline is much faster because the flywheel has less resistance to angular acceleration (smaller moment of inertia).

And yes.. the drivetrain losses suck in this car and so many others.

One thing people should be aware of though is the enourmous cost of putting in the lightweight flywheel. It is not an easy task. You have to drop the tranny out of the car. It's not a do it yourself enhancement that can be done in your driveway. Usually the installation labor costs more than the part itself.

The intake can be done by yourself. The exhaust & hi-flow cat can be done in literally a hour or two at your local muffler shop.

Personally, I have the flywheel & like it a lot. But if I had to do it all over again I think I would have done the hi-flow cat/exhaust & intake first, then the CZ unit, & finally the flywheel (if I did it at all).

Yes, the install cost of the flywheel can be pretty nasty. There's a few shops down here that will do it pretty cheap though.

Personally, I plan to have the clutch, flywheel and pressure plate all done at the same time so I'm not paying for them to drop the tranny multiple times.

Fanman, rxeighter and myself would disagree on the matter of being able to swap flywheels in our own driveways. First, I did mine and only needed help from my brother-in-law to align the tranny on re-installation. Second, I then drove to Atlanta and rxeighter and I did the same swap in the same fashion and I brought 99% of the tools, stands, and jack in the trunk of my RX-8 with me(I also brought along stuff for my race days at Road Atlanta with the Atl. group. The trunk is a lot bigger than it looks!). My motivation for helping rxeighter was to show him that the RX-8 is nowhere near as complex as people think. Anyone with prior experience wrenching on their own musclecars will be surprised at the similarities once under the car. However, I would also caution people to not fool themselves and think that they can do the swap just because they have the AutoArt model of the car. I encourage people to get under the car and look things over for a bit until it begins to look less intimidating. Then decide if they want to take on such a task. I figure if I can do it with no power tools and on my back most others could probably do it also, unless I am a prodigy:). I doubt that.

Fan, I agree with your prioritizing of the mods, though.

CRH

Ray,

But that's because you're like a genius ! :D Honestly knowing about 95% of the people (a group that would probably include myself) they would probably drop the tranny on their foot, before they were able to drop the tranny off the car. It's just pretty labor intensive vs. simply swapping out the intake, exhaust & hi-flow cat. I want people that are thinking about doing this mods to realize that. Not get half way through it and realize they are in way over their head.

As Ajax said if you are going to put in the flywheel, you should also do the rest of the clutch as well at the same time so you do not have to keep on pulling the transmission. I was not plainning on going FI at first, so did not see the need to do the clutch, but lo & behold here I am ready to drop the transmission again, because I made the mistake of putting in the flywheel first, without thinking of the clutch (besides back then they did not have the modified clutch for our cars yet).

A while back I started a thread asking others on the forum if they do their own work on their cars. It has been a while since it has registered a hit but I wonder what the thread might indicate with regard to the average level of experience or willingness of the average forum member to do their own work(?).

Personally, I am not comfortable with the assumption that others aren't capable. I don't figure that I have any special talent for auto mechanics but maybe I got lucky by having a high school program that was years ahead of its time and I just haven't realized how cutting edge it really was. It has been 22 years since I formally cracked a book on auto mechanics and I guess I am still hanging with the crowd, so to speak.

Anyway, I think most of us are capable of basic wrenching and I would tend to put the RX-8's flywheel/clutch assembly in the basic category because it doesn't require any special tools that must be purchased from the dealer or SST manufacturer.

Thanks for the kudos, BTW.

CRH