Hey OD, no noticeable diff in underhood heat. The machining entailed opening up the air log by drilling the entire length, opening up each air hole to the new opening, and drilling and tapping for the airpipe flange to bolt up. Steve said the stainless was really workhardened and hard to work with as far as tooling. I am glad to have it on the car and working and hope that it shows some gain. I don't trust butt dyno results as sometimes I can't find mine with both hands so hang on till I can git er done at Dynolab.

 

Couldn't the same have been done by plumbing in external piping?? Would have been much easier?? Only three holes tapped to take fittings?? or pipe welded in? Is there enough room for this??

 

The basic stuff was already there just not machined open. Steve said the big bitch of it all was making a fixture to hold the header so it would fit in the mill. If it were just a flanged header w/nothing else it would probably be pretty easy to build a ss tube and weld it to the header flange. If you have a chance to look at the stock manifold you can see that this is the way Mazda did it (sort of)

 

Is there any way you can take pics of it?

 

M8 glad to hear this thing is done. Good new years present.
Wish the rest of us could run this but without the air--unless we go catless-- it won't happen. Oh well-- i get into enough trouble as it is and I dang sure have a lot to learn before I can drive this car to its potential. One day I will take turn 7 like you do!
ANy plans to retry that hi flow cat and a 3" header back system after you dyno this?
Happy New Year! Stay safe and rotor on
Olddragger

 

Maybe next time it's on the lift but there are plenty of pics of it already on this thread...

OD, Idont know that it's worth trying the hiflo cat again. It flow tested w/in a couple of cfm as the stock setup and the independent test that was conducted on it found it to be exactly the same as stock. Oh well, so it sits next to the othe rshit that did nothing but bleed the wallet......

I am interested in seeing if there is any diff between the two cat backs. Even if the RB makes a little more than the JIC, I may keep the JIC on it for the weight savings.

 

dang it. I knew you where going to keep the JIC!
OD

 

well??

 

there are real hi-flo cats out there, much better than the RX-8 cat, you just got the shaft from somebody's marketing degree

 

so how does the rx-8 cat compare to the others? do you have the test data for the std cat compared to others?

 

I drove Marietta8's car yesterday up and down the street from his shop. His car has always felt fast to me. My butt dyno could tell a difference between pre-header and post header. I think the dyno results will show gains. I would be surprised if it didn't add a noticable difference. I think that is too bad though since without the air injection ports, this mod won't make it into my signature.
The car felt great and sounded good too. He dynos with 10lb more tq than me and about 14 more hp. It is noticable but the OBX seemed to add to that more. I couldn't romp on it since there was a cop hiding on a side street looking for people with mischief on their mind. It is not uncommon to see cars tearing up the cul-de-sac there.
Hopefully Marietta8 will get the sucker dynoed this week.

 

The only bad thing about all of this is the fact that even if the OBX header shows great gains, none of us will have the same product as he does because the machinast who did the modifications said he will never do it again. We would have to find someone ourselves who would perform the same mods or just use the OBX header as it comes from the factory. It would be nice if we had a dyno of the stock OBX header... If I missed that sorry.. Maybe someone could point me to that chart.

 

The mods done to the header aren't going to affect it's power one bit so don't worry about it's results vs a stock OBX header. This will be quite relevent.

 

Do you think i would be alright getting this header with stock exhaust or save the money and get an exhaust 1st

 

header will do nothing with out a exhaust

 

I hope to get to the dyno before Friday. The shop is full of work right now so please be patient as the businness has to come first. I want to know too!

 

good luck.

 

Just as a filler until M8 dyno is done, i thought I would post pics of my header that just came back from Passagula (sp) Mississippi where it was coated with JetHot 2000. Basically it is a coating that is good for 2400F, perfect for a rotary. The outside is rough and the inside is smooth (coated in and out.) the inside pic did not turn out as good as I had hoped. Can take another if y'all care. I will not be dynoing this. At least not yet. I never did a baseline so a dyno after each mod is more expencive than useful. Will go for one at the end, just to see. Sorry. Anyway, enjoy.

 

Wow - on the inside also. Looks smooth. I wonder what the hardness is?

 

How much was the Jet-Hot cost?

 

I paid $184 for the coat and return shipping. $15 to ship there. Almost 70% increase in price of the piece. Not sure of its worth. Definitely worth it if you read their marketing.

Interestingly, the inside is very smooth. Smoother than I remember when I shipped it. Maybe they polished it? Maybe the coating hides irregularities? I am not sure.

Hardness is something you will have to ask them about. They are very responsive to emails. If you cant find an email Ill pm you one.

 

looks great.

good luck.

beers

 

I'd still recommend shrouding or blanketing to help keep the heat out of the engine bay, possibly even a small electric fan, it may look like a pretty black now but under WOT conditions that mother is gonna glow cherry red

and the cost percentage being high is only because the OBX header has such a low cost, it's not so extreme on a $1400 header from Japan

interestingly, the emission portion of the japanese headers is actually a second machined plate that is TIG welded to the base exhaust flange

 

Hmm. That fan idea is a great idea.

Since the metal is now coated, I was considering wrapping in header tape for additional ability to keep the heat in.

Yeah, I didnt consider the cost of other headers.

 

the coating improved the appearance substantially, nice

I may have to consider them now after trying to steer you to someone else, I was planning to use either HPC or Swain