brownmound

....well not exactly...

my mechanic and I were installing my new Racing Beat (shorty primary) exhaust sytem in my SE on saturday. Torched off the connecting pipe, removed the air pump and ACV, installed the header, muffler....go to install the pre-silencer and he's torquing down on one of the nuts and it's not moving. Well the dang ol threaded stud that is welded to the pre-silencer sheared off...tried to grind down the weld but it was too deep, finally gave up in favor of getting a replacement.

So I understand it's not completely RB's fault since they didn't manufacture that stud, but that thing shouldn't have snapped like it did. The long and short of it is I have to wait a few more days to drive the Mound with it's emancipated ponies. In the meantime I'm driving one of his Miata's with a RB exahust, which ain't so bad except I'm 6'-2" and it feels like a toy. Fun to drive though, especially on a clear and sunny upper 80's day in Austn. Does make me want to uprgrade the suspension on my car so I can get some of the handling that that little puppy has.

Right on.

82streetracer

iTrader: (1)

miatas kick ***, but I hear yeh on the hieght, im 6,1 and I barely fit in my moms miata, but once you get settled its a kick *** car.

Suparslinc

emancipated ponies lol

fatboy7

'moms miata' .... LOL

alien_rx7

Anybody see that episode of, I think, Everybody Loves Raymond where the brother gets what looks like a Miata and everyone tells him it's a girl's car? He doesn't believe them and as he's driving around all he notices are girls driving the car and even a little girl tells him her Barbie has one just like it!

nimrodTT

Mike,
Same thing happened to me. The nut caught the threads wrong and I ended up shearing the bolt where the threads end. I actually called up racing beat and talked to the guy who designed the presilencers originally and he told me that the end plates are an inch thick and that bolt is welded on the other side of the plate. He said the best way to fix it would be to drill and tap, then thread a stud in and tack that in place. I of course didn't want to mess with all that so I tried welding a new stud in it's place, but it didnt work out, so I sold the header and muffler and am now using the presilencer with a supertrapp endcap as a muffler.

alien_rx7,
Yeah, I saw part of that one. Didn't he run into a bunch of women driving Miatas and they all told him it was a cute car?

JEC-31

Nothing's perfect in this world, that's a given, but I'm waiting to see how good RB's customer service response is...

JDuncan

iTrader: (3)

I had the same thing happen with the RB system on my 80. I eventually just welded the entire flange between the header and the presilencer. Has held fine so far. I don't know if I could have got away with doing that on one of RB exhausts for the 81-85. Their presilencer is much longer and I don't know how easy it would be to remove the system with that much extra length.

Maguire

iTrader: (1)

Good thing someone said something, now ill know to look out for that when i put mine on this weekend. With my luck the bold would probably would snap right off

Wankelguy

I just installed a Racing Bleat header and presilencer on my '80 yesterday. I must say that the fit was superb, and everything lined up just perfect. The hardest part of the job was getting the top rear nut off of that hateful thermal reactor without pulling the intake manifold. I finally ended up using a u-jointed 9/16" socket that had been ground down to shorten the socket and decrease the outside diameter. The 9/16" socket is just a hair larger than the 14mm nut, so the socket can go on at a slight angle which made it a heck of a lot easier.