Hello , and Happy New Year! I start this year off with the same goal as last year, to race in as many events as I can, while improving the Integra’s performance along the way. Pictured above is the new exhaust installed. Continue reading to see how I got there, like usual it wasn’t simple.
A few years ago I got a great deal on a used Fujitsubo RM01A cat back exhaust for a type R DC2. The exhaust ended up being too long to fit a stock LS, so I put it on a shelf waiting to complete the rest of the system.
The Stock system was like an anchor on this car, weighing at over 37lbs, not including the header which is made of cast iron and weighed close to 20lbs. If the new system gained no horsepower the weight savings alone will make this a worthwhile upgrade
Replacing the Stock header will be this Skunk2 Alpha series header. It is made of stainless steel with a 4-2-1 tri y design with a 2.5 inch merge collector.
I wrapped the header in DEI titanium heat wrap, which will keep the under hood temperatures down. The car is only a track car and only see’s Southern California and Nevada race tracks I am not worried about moisture getting trapped in the cloth and rusting the headers.
The factory header mounting point is replaced with one that comes with the Skunk2 Header, and uses the factory location.
Joining the Fujitsubo and Skunk2 header will be a universal 2.5 inch Magnaflow catalytic converter. This is another piece of the system I had lying around. Every race league either requires a cat or places a penalty on cars without one, so the decision to add one was easy.
The catalytic would require some fabrication to make it fit in between the exhaust and header. I ordered 2.5 inch stainless steel collars to mate it to the exhaust.
The finished catalytic converter all welded up and read for service.
The Fujitsubo exhaust mid pipe connects to the factory catalytic converter by bottleneck down to the 2.25 inch diameter of the whole factory exhaust. This would not work with the new 2.5 inch through out system. After mock-up I determined where to cut the mid pipe.
One problem I found is that the diameter of the exhaust is not exactly 2.5 inches, this meant I would have to flare the mid pipe to be able to weld on the collar.
After welding the collars I used paper gaskets at all the flanges to seal up any leaks.
The whole system sits lower than the stock one it replaced, the drive around the block showed no problems but I might have to wait til the first trip to see if it’s a problem with speed bumps or ramps.
Here is audio of start up and a few revs.