Ultimate-Racing exhaust installed + review
Ultimate-Racing exhaust installed + review
The FedEx man brought me a nice Canadian exhaust today, eh. 
Here's my ratings:
Sound: 10
Lightweight: 10
Ease of installation: 6
Fit and Finish: 9
Style: 8
Welding: 10
Value for price: 10
Overall: 9
I love this exhaust! It is super lightweight, the welds are perfect, and its church mouse quiet. I couldn't think of any way those things could be better.
The butt dyno gains feel pretty good, and I have no problem believing 10-15whp with the mods I have. Still, the butt dyno is really subjective, so I'll wait to report on this until I get it on the dyno with EcuTeK this weekend.
The fit and finish is really good. The only thing that could up the score would be if the piping was polished like the muffler and tip are. But let's be realistic, that would up the price, and you never see that far under the car anyway.
The best thing about the exhaust is that not only is it a great product, the pricing on them is phenomenal! Its priced less than many exhausts on the market, several hundred less than a few of them. For a dad on a budget, it hits all the right buttons.
There are only a couple places I can ding this exhaust. One is the style. It still looks great with the Magnaflow muffler, but I do miss the dual tip a tiny bit. However, with the way the rear bumper is styled from the factory, it looks alright. Plus the weight savings of a single exit more than makes up for this. The other thing about the style the way it exits. I love the way the tip is straight cut, but I have always been a fan of exhausts that come straight out the back and not at a slant. Really minor gripe there, and I knew it going in.
The only thing that sucked was the installation. It won't suck as much for you guys, because you can benefit from my experience. **Its also important to note that this installation was much more the fault of the design of the stock exhaust, not the Ultimate exhaust.**
The problem with installation is that the stupid stock cat pipe has a heat shield that goes over the flange. The factory midpipe flange goes into the heat shield and meets up with the cat pipe's flange. Since the Ultimate exhaust is a 3" unit, obviously the flange on it needs to be bigger. Well, welcome to a massive pain in the butt.
To make matters challenging, you have to remove the factory cat pipe (2 more bolts and the O2 housing) and then unbolt and fight off the factory heat shield, which has four fold bends. If you had redonkulous mad skillz, you might be able to do this on the car. I could not.
Another dumb thing Mitsu did was have the nut part of the bolt built into the cat pipe. Well guess what? They are made really strange and I fought with the Ultimate midpipe and factory cat pipe for about 45 minutes trying to get them to merge. _No_frakking_way_ that was going to happen, it just wouldn't aligh. So I went to Home Depot, since the supplied bolts and nuts weren't long enough to go all the way through the extended portion of the factory cat pipe with the factory nuts.
Nearly three hours from start time, the exhaust is on. I can do an Evo VIII or IX turbo-back in about an hour. Now that I have done one on the X, I will be able to do it again easier next time. Every part of the stock exhaust is a PITA to remove, especially the dumb stock muffler.
If this last part puts you off, don't let it. I have a really simple solution: Buy the test pipe at the same time and forego all that crap.
A+ to Darryl and team. Great freaking exhaust.
Here's my ratings:
Sound: 10
Lightweight: 10
Ease of installation: 6
Fit and Finish: 9
Style: 8
Welding: 10
Value for price: 10
Overall: 9
I love this exhaust! It is super lightweight, the welds are perfect, and its church mouse quiet. I couldn't think of any way those things could be better.
The butt dyno gains feel pretty good, and I have no problem believing 10-15whp with the mods I have. Still, the butt dyno is really subjective, so I'll wait to report on this until I get it on the dyno with EcuTeK this weekend.
The fit and finish is really good. The only thing that could up the score would be if the piping was polished like the muffler and tip are. But let's be realistic, that would up the price, and you never see that far under the car anyway.
The best thing about the exhaust is that not only is it a great product, the pricing on them is phenomenal! Its priced less than many exhausts on the market, several hundred less than a few of them. For a dad on a budget, it hits all the right buttons.
There are only a couple places I can ding this exhaust. One is the style. It still looks great with the Magnaflow muffler, but I do miss the dual tip a tiny bit. However, with the way the rear bumper is styled from the factory, it looks alright. Plus the weight savings of a single exit more than makes up for this. The other thing about the style the way it exits. I love the way the tip is straight cut, but I have always been a fan of exhausts that come straight out the back and not at a slant. Really minor gripe there, and I knew it going in.
The only thing that sucked was the installation. It won't suck as much for you guys, because you can benefit from my experience. **Its also important to note that this installation was much more the fault of the design of the stock exhaust, not the Ultimate exhaust.**
The problem with installation is that the stupid stock cat pipe has a heat shield that goes over the flange. The factory midpipe flange goes into the heat shield and meets up with the cat pipe's flange. Since the Ultimate exhaust is a 3" unit, obviously the flange on it needs to be bigger. Well, welcome to a massive pain in the butt.
To make matters challenging, you have to remove the factory cat pipe (2 more bolts and the O2 housing) and then unbolt and fight off the factory heat shield, which has four fold bends. If you had redonkulous mad skillz, you might be able to do this on the car. I could not.
Another dumb thing Mitsu did was have the nut part of the bolt built into the cat pipe. Well guess what? They are made really strange and I fought with the Ultimate midpipe and factory cat pipe for about 45 minutes trying to get them to merge. _No_frakking_way_ that was going to happen, it just wouldn't aligh. So I went to Home Depot, since the supplied bolts and nuts weren't long enough to go all the way through the extended portion of the factory cat pipe with the factory nuts.
Nearly three hours from start time, the exhaust is on. I can do an Evo VIII or IX turbo-back in about an hour. Now that I have done one on the X, I will be able to do it again easier next time. Every part of the stock exhaust is a PITA to remove, especially the dumb stock muffler.
If this last part puts you off, don't let it. I have a really simple solution: Buy the test pipe at the same time and forego all that crap.
A+ to Darryl and team. Great freaking exhaust.
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My daughter's strep is better, and I am back at work today. If anyone looked at the Ultimate thread and still wants more pictures, please let me know what you want and I will try to snap some this evening.
