I'd love to find a local shop that could weld two flanges to a mandrel bent ss pipe. Do the prices reflect "labor and fabrication" because "materials" don't seem to merit the high costs...
I'm ranting I guess, but I'd like to find something commensurate with a muffler delete pipe ($160) which rivals the gains of any ($500-$1000) cat back exhaust.

4-BNGR

That smooth bend is where the price comes in.

Well maybe but I have always felt import exhausts are ridiculous. It seems even the most cost minded companies have to make bigger than average domestic profits per pipe cause they are playing to a limited audience. It does bother me that a TB is 1K thats truly out of this world but what are we to do?

Witout consumers, vendors can't survive. So, demand dictates price in a way. I think vendors have us by the berries knowing that consumers don't buy Evo's to leave them stock. Can't live with them and can't live without them - type thing...

I wonder how much a mandrel bender costs and a welding torch. Any "Jesse Jame's" types out there?

Absolutely true if your dealing with a long enough timeline for the prices to even out and the consumer base to hold out but we will eat ramen and buy the expensive stuff for our cars while the milage is low and the enjoyment is high

I don't think it's the Tools that cost. It's the skill and person who does the work. You can always get some noob or yourself to build one if saving money is so important. just remember do you want it done quickly, done right, or done cheaply. Choose Two.

ok buddy...you try and find someone to mandrel bend you a one-off piece and see how much it costs.

i think prices are at an all-time low right now. $300-400 for a 3" downpipe is cheap in my opinion. have you ever priced out how much 3" CNC Mandrel bends are? How about the labor to pay an employee to weld it?

We arent talking of doing 1 off pieces, we are also not talking about NY union workers fabbing these things. What we are stating is there is a massive amount of profit passed on to us for an in house arc monkey mass producing these things 9-5pm every day and poping them for 15 min a piece in a jig. There is no shortage or huge amount of work or 1 off pieces just cash flowing as well as the exhaust gases

i don't think it's as easy as you think.

I think a lot of the costs from a well made DP are from R&D. It takes a lot more in understanding how exhaust flows than in just bending a peice of pipe. my .02

plain and simple, they can charge what they want becasue we "the consumer" will pay it. Hell I paid 30,000+ for a car that's ganna get old and deteriorate after a couple decades...

^ exactly. its kinda like how nike's cost 3 bux to make and cost 130 dollars to buy. or how we pay a dollar for a bottle of WATER...

Price a turbo-back for an Audi S4 and you'll know why I gave up tuning that car beyond chipping the ECU and traded for the Evo.

A pair of AWE down pipes and a cat back Borla exhaust will run you in the neighborhood of $2300. Granted there are two downpipes but still, $850?!? And that's just stage 2+! A full stage 3 install will run you in the neighborhood of $10K not including the 40 hours to RnR the turbos. "Err, what? I only get ~420HP at the crank for $15000?!?" I digress...

Evo parts aren't cheap but the bang for the buck is pretty good for non-domestic speed.

Try the NSX 1700 for a cat back and 1700 for the headers, Oh like the comptech supercharger $9800 but it does make the car feel like a V8

Thats an exotic ryan of course it has exotic prices