Holes in exhaust pipe.
 

Hi, I've been looking around the forums for a while and I haven't found any info about this subject at all, not on google either. The story is a little long, skip the next paragraph if you don't feel like reading this 'intro'.

I go drag racing every week with my '04 rx-8 (I don't have my driver's license yet so I need someone to come with me and watching drags is more fun than just waiting...). About a month ago I forgot to turn off traction control (I have the GT) so ...

...the car shaked a lot when I launched and the pipe split just before the muffler. I decided to repair it so it wouldn't split completely. I cut it off completely with a cutting wheel, removed the muffler and put a stainless pipe I bought at canadian tire with 2 brackets to hold it(edit: I put the muffler back :D). The problem is that I had to cut the pipe parallel to the sides in a + shape so I could stretch it a little to make it fit (that was their biggest pipe :S).

Now I have 4 little holes, I love the added power (I can feel it and see it on the time slips, I gained ~0.2 secs :D) and the sound, but I'm worried it can be bad for something. The backfires don't come out from the tips so my guess my car spits fire on itself, or they die in the muffler. Could anyone tell my if it's bad? I want it to last until next year, I'll replace it with an aftermarket kit, probably the Agency Power Ti-Tip.

Sorry the post is even longer than I predicted :S

i vote for zoomies out the hood.

Zoomies out the hood would be pretty cool, and very Mazda Zoom-Zoom, but they'd pose the same problem as the holes in the pipe: potential for exhaust fumes and monoxide getting into the car.

G: next time you do something like this, get a pipe expander rather than cutting slots. For what you've got now, the ghetto solution is to get a muffler bandage or similar named product. That's a strip of some kind of heat curing material that you wrap around the pipe, covering the holes. You can find it at finer purveyors of auto parts, like Advance Auto or Pep Boys.

Ken

What?

Thanks for the answers guys, but

-For the tube expander: I don't know why I didn't think about it...

-For the 'ghetto solution' , I don't really think it will survive drag nights, I don't really mind for the fumes entering the car since it's after the cat and it would only get in the trunk if it actually did get in. This is going to be my car's first winter (previous owner lived in a rural area, you actually need a SUV with that much snow on the ground, his wife couldn't drive a RWD in snow anyway).

I'm more concerned about the damage that can be done to the engine over time, as I said, I'm going to buy a cat-back next summer so I don't want to fix the stock one unless really necessary.

Years ago I nearly croaked from a leak in a tailpipe that let exhaust gases "only" into the trunk. If you're going to drive the car for more than 15 seconds at a time at the strip, get the exhaust fixed.

The ghetto patch stuff is surprisingly rugged. In my youth I had cars that seemed to have more of that stuff than metal. An alternative is to re-do the joint with a bead of muffler cement, which could plug those holes.

Or pick up a monoxide detector.

Ken

Well I have driven it for several hours straight a couple times (takes about 2h to go to the track), I never got stuck in traffic though. This is way more serious than I tought :(. I'll try to get a monoxide detector to see if it's actually airtight.

As for running more than 15 seconds at a time, I do 16.2, guess I'll have to hold my breath a little ;). Should I open the windows after or is it going to be worse?

You have an rx8 to drag race?????????!!!!!!!!?????!?!?!?!???!?

....and for those 16 seconds, I'm free!

Thanks for flaming me after I explicitly said I do drag races because I can't go lapping yet. And no, I don't expect to win, why is winning so important?

because if your not a winner, your a loser

thats my view on it

Yeah and you owe me a 16 second car. Anything lime green with stickers will do.

So you're saying you can't go to a regular road course event or even an AutoX event? LOLWUT? You bought an RX-8, you don't win at the quarter mile, you don't go to any events involving turning of the steering wheel; then wtf was the point?

I'm going to take a SawZall and cut a slit into my exhaust too for extrapowah.

Not yet.

Not likely that the car will make it until next year without a clutch, transmission, differential...or all three. Not to mention tires.

You get a sportscar whose chassis was designed for corners and then go drag race it? It'd make more sense to grow a mullet and have your folks buy you an old Nova.

That makes about as much sense as a shaven panda on a unicycle.

What if my panda is on a unicycle but only has a mohawk.

So you raced a shaven Panda with a mullet on a unicycle at the Drag strip and lost.

Maybe I got confused as I only skim read the thread.

This thread was too big to fail

So the Panda worked for Lehman Brothers?