Hmmm, cheap.... you probably should have bought a Honda and purchased one of the many 3-5" exhausts they have.

For the RX, racingbeat. If you are too cheap for that. Save. The ebay exhausts are crap. They will work for about a year, but quite a few tend to rust out because they are made from poor quality materials. Also, with an N/A, you don't need a huge 5" exhaust.... just FYI. I have seen too many of those around, and it looks trashy.

If you just get a cat-back, you won't see huge power gains. You'll see significant gains if you go for headers - high flow cat or straight pipe - cat-back.

Also, a majority of "cold air" intakes suck up hot air from near the radiator and cause horsepower loss. The heat in the engine bay is significant, and even if you put a huge cone filter on there, and think to yourself when you are driving that you gained uber horsepower, you are just fooling yourself. I would just drop a K&N into the stock airbox until you can afford a real CAI w/ air box.

 

im probably going to save up and get headars and racing beat. thank you all for your input.

 

one more Q, what do yall think of the corksport power series headers and exhaust system?

 

I don't have any experience with corksport, but I have heard they are nice, but not as nice as RB.

 

There are some very serious threads about exhaust in the forums....the one in particular was either started or has a lot of posts by C Ludwig. The thread will have more info about exhausts than you ever wanted to know...

...if I recall, the Corksport Header, by design produces more power than the RB Header. This is because the RB Header is too short to be a long header and too long to be a short header...I may be remembering this incorrectly however.

You can't go wrong with either one.

 

Yes, ironically the RB header does not follow the dimensional guidelines given in the RB catalog. Given that, the full RB exhaust on my 84 RX-7 made more or less the same hp/torque (gained 2hp, lost 4.2 lb-ft torque) as the custom-built long collected race exhaust that was previously on the car, but the RB exhaust was very quiet.

 

Rb headers ftw

 

Please don't ghetto another 7 with a needless loud exhaust.

If anything, save up for a used RB exhaust. It will be less hassle and same $ in the long run. As said before, cheap exhausts can become a headache. They can rust, not fit right, not work right (it takes research and knowhow to make those!), melt, etc. Cops might give you tickets - people like *me* will call you in any chance we get if you're too loud. Even if it's another 7 owner. It's your car, but I've about had it with ricers blowing past my house at 5am.

I've got stock headers going to RB downpipe, resonator, y-pipe and mufflers. It's a quality build with a nice semi-quiet sound. The power gains are negligible on an NA car. If you cannot afford to drop 1k into the vehicle at any time without sweating it you have bought the wrong car my friend

 

So what do you think of me getting corksport headers+hi flow cat+rb catback?

 

The best off the shelf header IMO was the SDJ. Rotary Shack is now selling what appears to be a very good imitation of the original which is NLA. Link and pic below.

What I have seen in spending time on the dyno with about 10 different FCs prepped as ITS road racers is that, in the end, there is very little practical difference between the "good" systems and the bad. In a situation like competitive road racing, 2-3 hp is worth looking for. On the street it's really not. The RB header is considered one of the worst for performance but, in the end, it stacks up within a few horsepower of the best systems. Combine that with the fact that it's built like a tank compared to some of the others and RB's reputation for high quality and it's hard to go wrong with the RB stuff. What I have seen as the absolute best systems in terms of both peak power and the broadest curve is the custom long runner systems with the primarys being some 80+ inches long.

http://www.rotaryshack.com/