Ebay FD T4 Manifold Review
 

Hi Guys,

I feel like I need to post this up here so people will know what they are getting.

First off, I like ebay Chinese stuff. For the most part, I find that it is similar quality to what I would get somewhere else for 3x the price. On another note, I am an engineer and certified weld inspector, so I do know what I am talking about. One more disclaimer, I emailed EMUSA after I noticed the fitment issue, and they did refund me $20, but after I looked closer and found all the other problems I am still far from satisfied.

As far as I can tell, all the ebay manifolds are the same regardless of what vendor they come from. The one I bought is from EMUSA. All of the ebay vendors list slightly different specs, but they tend to claim that it is direct bolt on, high quality stainless, fully TIG welded, etc.

The first picture at the bottom is the stock photo of what I bought. Right off the bat there were a couple problems: A) The so-called T4 flange is not even close the the right shape B)It didnt fit in my engine bay, because the wastegate flange interfered with the subframe.

I don't have a picture on this computer of the subframe issue, but the second picture shows the little bend I had to add the fix it. The 3rd picture shows the difference between this manifold and a proper T4 flange. Notice how much bigger their D-shaped ports are, meaning you will have a huge flow loss at the turbine flange. Surprisingly, they actually had to swell the tubing to form this shape, I have no idea why they would go to the trouble to do that for something that is such a bad idea performance wise, and the fact that they did it makes it near-impossible to replace their retarded flange with a real one.

After I noticed all this crap, I decided to inspect the manifold a little closer, and found that the flange surfaces for the engine and the turbo were both around .015" out of flatness. Then another stupid thing: these manifolds are NOT TIG welded. They are MIG welded, then someone runs a cover pass over them with a TIG to make them look nice. If you look at the next pictures, you can see the area in the center they couldnt reach with the TIG, and some other areas where the TIG pass didn't cover all the way, and where there is significant undercut.

For anyone unfamiliar, the reasons manifolds are usually TIG welded (aside from looks) are that TIG welds typically have a cleaner root, so there is less flow obstruction on the inside of the pipe, and because TIG welds are inherently more sound on thinner material because there is less chance for porosity and better fusion. This is not to say that manifolds cannot or should not be MIG welded, but covering it up with a TIG pass and advertising it as TIG welded doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for me.

One more thing is that due to the shape of this manifold, you are limited to a pretty small turbine housing without hitting the strut tower or LIM. My turbo is a Borg Warner S200SX, which is a smaller turbo than most people run, and it just barely fits. My 42R from my other car doesnt even come close to fitting.

I was planning to run this manifold permanently, and thought I might have to modify it a little bit to suit my purpose, but after seeing how bad it is, I will just use it for a while until I have time to fab a real one. I am tempted to do a back to back dyno run just to see how much power this thing costs me, but we will see once I have the new one made.

To sum this all up: If you're shopping for a manifold, DO NOT buy one of these ones with the D-shaped turbine flange.

PICTURES:

Here is the stock photo of what I bought:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...VL._SS500_.jpg

Fixed wastegate flange:
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...c/DSCF1183.jpg

Crazy ports:
Attachment 723847

A little glare on this one, but you can see the original weld underneath the 'decoration' pass:
Attachment 723848

Undercut:
Attachment 723849

Area they couldn't reach to cover up:
Attachment 723850

As installed (temporary until I have time to fab up a proper one):
Attachment 723851

thanks for the review.
those ports are crazy looking.
i knew the manifolds off ebay would be not high quality but not that bad. lol

your brave for buying something like this from ebay.
i buy ebay stuff all the time but im scared to buy things of high importance like a manifold/turbos/bov/etc...

dyno testing isn't worth the money imo. just knowing that its not the best is good enough for me.
....actually u should. and after u get the legit one on. the difference would be interesting

are u certain that thats not the mani for fc...

Odd that it didn't fit in your car. Mine was supposed to be temporary since I originally wanted the HKS cast iron manifold (price and delay issues with that one). I have been using mine for 2 years now, I will admit that my car is a weekend car. I have put about 5000 miles on it. Don't know how long this thing would last on a car that is driven harder. I will eventually upgrade if it fails or starts leaking.

I am also using a borg warner s200 (modified front wheel) with a 1.15 hot-side and it fits. On the dyno it made 357rwhp @ 12.5 lbs of boost (synapse wastegate).

Unfortunately, the poor quality is well documented and people just keep on buying them.

Most people complain about them failing/welds cracking. To me that is not an issue, I can weld it back together anytime, which is why I bought it. I was unprepared for it to be so poorly designed though.

myturbo88, I ordered a FD one, I guess it is possible they sent me the wrong one, it does look like the one in the picture though.

i recently installed one on a customer's car it made 378 hp at 12 psi. the problem that we had was the wastegate runner don't flow enough so the boost kept spiking. we had to add a second wastegate.

Look inside at where the wastegate runners are welded on at. They dont cut the holes out large enough I spent about an hr enlarge the hole to flow better. My welds on my manifold look better than yours do in the photos.

Garbage in=Garbage out. Thanks for taking the time to write the review :icon_tup:

Am I missing something here... The ebay manifold (the same one a few venders sell with thier kits btw) are junk???

-J

im not going to say that they are good manifolds. but on a budget build they can and will work. the biggest issue with them is that the flanges must be machined flat to actually make a decent seal. sometimes they do crack over time. but not one has a flat flange they are very U shaped which makes them leak. but with a new t4 flange and possibly a tial v-band for the wg they can be used for a good bit. oh and there bolt holes are usually off by a good amount.

if you add up the cost of the ebay manifold, materials and machine shop labor and welding labor for making it actually usable.... dont you end up with a poorly flowing poorly designed manifold that costs about 75% of what a high quality manifold would cost?

not to mention the upcoming labor of dis assembly labor and repair costs when it inevitably cracks? (and hopefully doesnt take your turbo with it)


i've learned that if you are on a limited budget, you really cannot afford to cut corners.

Mine fits a T72 and a HKS 50mm WG no problem.

i bought the obx manifold, and i must say the welds are alot better looking there isnt any splatter

The manifold I got with my used t04r is probably a cheap ebay like manifold. It looked decent, but then again I had nothing to compare it to. It came with a 50mm hks style replica wastegate, and there is only one runner going to the wastegate and alot of boost creep with lower boost, but that's not a problem for me. I'm Getting some boost flutter/oscillation with 23 to 24 psi in 4th gear, I need a different spring in there, or I was tthinking I could add a needle valve to the pressure line going to the side port to reduce the pressure a little that opens it, along with the ebc on the top port to fine tune boost control for high boost, might give that a try.

I will never install another one. Every single one that came my way had problems and the customers who insisted on using them ended up spending more money for me to make it fit than it would cost to get a proper manifold. Flanges almost always warped from excessive heat during the welding. Poor quality steel and poor weld penetration. Excessive weld slag inside the runners. Sometimes they try to gring this down. Poor wastegate placement. Manifold is almost always tapped for the wrong size hardware. You can't expect an m8 bolt to hold down a decent size turbo. Most turbine housings will hit the lower or be too close for a proper heat sheild. Overall they are junk. Save it for your honda civic.

i feel the same way about installing just about any chinese parts on a customer's car regardless of how much they beg me to. i just spent about an extra 8 hours of my life making one of the chinese knockoff Greddy M spec kits fit onto an FD. the brackets that were welded onto the intercooler were all off by a good inch in any direction, the core was dropped onto something and the core punctured, missing a bracket for the radiator, IC pipes a little long/short in every direction, etc, etc, etc. and this was bought from one of our vendors.

i have no problem installing the crappy fitting parts onto my own cars because it's MY time but i'm not eating cost anymore re-engineering this shit.

Actually my manifold does have two runners going to the wastegate, I don't know why I thought it only had one haha. My manifold's t4 flange has the two bigger D shaped ports like the cheap ones on ebay, but my turbo has one large port so I guess it works okay, it's not divided like you see on many other turbos, see pic attached.

I'm wondering what the flanges look like on the Megan Racing manifolds, also sold on ebay but for about $200 - http://www.meganracing.com/product_d...id=374&catid=7. They would be better if they looked like the manifolds sold at http://www.rx7store.net/RX_7_Turbo_M...20manifold.htm

As this discussion has been extended for intercoolers as well, I need to say that there is one good thing about it. The good thing is, Greddy felt to offer a cheaper version of there intercoolers where everything fits perfectly with no need for any modifications for a price which is more than good.

The only thing I do not get is, why do ppl. keep buying this cheap stuff from CN when them can have a top product for let us say 100USD more? Ppl tend to spend 200USD more to get the crappy stuff installed instead of getting a good product.....

As the CN stuff seems to put some pressure to manufacturers one more example to share. HKS has lowered the price for there GT series wastegates more than 40% last year! You will get a very good stuff with any support. For example you need a different spring as you now able to run more boost, no problem. You can get it within few days and this spring will fit 100%. When I read here, that some of you are running a CN made wastegate, I really do not understand why you are doing this..... You mean it was 200USD less than the HKS unit... OK, but you spend 600USD to get the boost spikes fixed?

hey good review, I have one of these chinese manifold. I wonder how much hp I'm loosing with this manifold.

i'll correct those figures for you, a knockoff intercooler kit is ~$320-400 compared to the genuine at $1400-2000.

http://www.greddy.com/products/ic-oi...ter:model:RX7/
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MK1-M...item25676daabc

a knockoff wastegate is $100 compared to the namebrand at $800.

you're saving more than a few hundred dollars in both of those examples. and the kicker is that they work, with a little bit to quite a bit of tweaking but some people have the skill and tools to fix them to work properly.

the reason people have been opting out in some cases is because the name brand stuff is mainly just for the name. and in many cases the parts aren't even made by the companies like HKS and Greddy, like their turbos.

building a car with all namebrand parts you can be taking it in the rear when if you have the ability to do it for much less with a slight hit to performance redesign parts to be as efficient while pocketing the money and putting it towards other things. i have yet to see anyone get hassled when they popped their hood and saw those parts. sure fitment is better on the true greddy kit versus the cheapo china crap kit but the china core is fine, the piping is fine, the quad layered silicone couplers are fine, even the cheapo stainless hose clamps are as good as the cheap ones the greddy kit comes with. the greddy kit requires cutting and modifying the car anyways, so there is already a competent skill required to install even the namebrand parts. as i mentioned though, if it was for my car i'd spend the extra 8 hours fitting the china kit to save over $1000 to buy a nice ball bearing turbo with that money, the performance difference between the 2 is likely almost unnoticable as the core and piping dimensions are the same.

as for me, i usually attempt to work around the cheap fitment and quality issues but it gets old real quick and i won't be aiding in the money savings while losing my own time anymore. don't take my previous annoyed attitude as a point that all of these knockoffs aren't worth anything, they are, while i do agree that it sucks that the companies that did design the kit in the first place are taking the hit, they are overpriced to begin with which is why they are being replaced.

can you tell me that the greddy intercoolers really cost over $1k more to produce than the knockoffs with the same exact materials? sure it's communist china working for nothing but i can tell you that there are plenty of people who have already passed hands with these kits to inflate them to even their $350-400 price tags. the name brand parts are just quite simply overpriced, even USA made products cost less to purchase then the japanese made products with the hefty price tags aimed at the street market in japan kids with rich parents.

I stay away from parts that can harm my engine if they fail like WG, BOV, Turbos and Boost Controllers. Ebay pulleys are fine, manifolds they just crack, intercoolers and stuff like that with no mechanism.

I can't speak for all of the China manifolds but I do know that the OBX manifolds are pretty good. They have the same runner design but they have real T4 flanges and I have yet to see one crack.

A properly tuned car will never receive engine damage from any of those listed parts failing. It's just a pain in the butt when you have to fix/replace them.

thewird

boost cut or a pop off valve is a good safety measure to utilize. even the best name brand parts still fail.

so a stuck closed wastegate won't harm your engine?

+1

Nope, because a proper tune will include a fuel cut just above your target boost level. No fuel, no damage. And even if it boosts over a little but not enough to hit fuel cut, there should be extra fuel up there anyway.

thewird

Wouldn't a fuel cut cause a quick lean condition and that be bad, wouldn't an ignition cut be better, isn't that why its better to have an ignition box with a ignition cut rev limiter instead of a ecu fuel cut rev limiter. A very rich map in boost levels above desired boost pressure and an electronic boost controller with a warning and boost limiter features is good, the warning feature beeps at you.

No, fuel cut means no fuel starting fom the next compession stoke which means no more combustion.

On side note, the stock fuel cut on the 2nd gens was bad because it only cut fuel on one rotor.

Ignition cut is good for a rev limiter but not a boost cut.

Boost limiter on a boost controller won't help u if a line pops off or the wastegate malfunctions. If your relying on that for protection, u really have no real protection.

thewird

AEM TruBoost has a overboost alarm.

The factory ECU on the FD only fuel cuts the front rotor...haven't tested it on the PFC yet.

An alarm isn't going to help u after your tubo hits 30 psi within a quarter of a second.

thewird

True that

I didn't realize the stock fd computer cuts fuel only on the one rotor. I guess that explains the blown engines instead of doing its job.

The powerfc completly cuts fuel on both rotors along with every aftemarket ecu with a fuel cut.

thewird

i suppose some people do not know what the things are i listed just above you but a quick search should explain how they work to save your engine.

+1 so true!
I have a buddy that recently rebuilt his engine for this exact reason. Limping the car around on 10-12psi waiting for a tune....WG line pops off, 26psi...hello rebuild.

I wasn't able to fully test fuel cut function of the fuel injector circuits on the PFC due to having issues to get it to reliably enter fuel cut...it was sometimes rather inconsistent.

I should be able to get reliable data on this next Spring when my car is back on the road.

it cuts fuel to one rotor on extremely light cruising and some decel situations, on hard decel fuel is cut from both rotors. during Rev cut the Apexi should be cutting fuel to both rotors, i don't even recall if there is a boost cut with the stock FD ECU as the engine usually is toast before anyone can figure that one out.

I will never brag about having ebay parts on my car but the reality is I do. My intercooler/manifold and wastegate are all Ebay Chinese crap. I have made a lot of power on the setup and have never had any issues.

Intercooler (Greddy Copy)= Fit perfectly no leaks or problems, they did send me worm clamps which I complained about and they sent me cheap t-bolt clamps that had weak threads. Easy enough fix.

Wastegate (50mm copy) = I have had two of these on two different setups. Both of them stuck open the first time the gate opened then I would hit it with air compressor to shut it and it would never happen again. My guess is poor quality coating that needed to rub off shaft. No boost problems. If this ever fails I have the proper tuning adjustments that it would not destroy the motor.

Manifold= Tig welded spacer on to make it clear the FC manifold. Has worked well with no cracks or problems. I did not buy from EMusa, they had lots of negative reviews and the stock photos you could spot many imperfections. I bought mine from a different vendor and paid about 60-70 more than the cheaper options. 2nd manifold I had I can not confirm if it was off ebay or not, but it was the same design, I adapted to t6 frame and had a 60 pound turbo sitting on it with the manifold glowing red hot multiple times, no problems. Neither of these have failed.


All in all, I will never suggest to anyone to run Chinese parts over authentic parts. You have to make sure you have all your bases covered so it doesn't destroy the motor. Not to mention using Chinese parts hurts development and profitability of the companies that bring these great ideas and concepts to us. I am a hypocrite and I went this way because cars are a hobby and not worth the extra debt or financial burden to do what is right.

Yes the stock ECU does have a boost induced fuel cut, but it only cuts fuel to the front rotor.

Somebody with real world experience with the parts giving insight. That's rare when everyone here seems to be a self proclaimed expert as soon as they get a 250-300whp RX7 or a grossly overpriced gt35/gt40 kit from vendors. :uh:

I am using the same manifold on my car, and people who say that this can't/won't make power obviously have no idea what they are talking about and need to STFU. I don't know why everyone feels the need to review a product that they have never seen or used before, and comment on quality. You just make yourself look like an idiot like Iwan instead of giving useful info such as karack and frostycrowd gave us

One of my friends is making 650+ rwhp on his bridged 13b with an HKS t51r. He's been running several months with no issues with the manifold. Both of us had to port/polish the inside of the manifold but that's really minor. If you all are so worried about it cracking then spend a couple bucks to have a brace TIG welded on. Better than spending $800 on $50 worth of tubing, and a couple flanges that are cheap as well.

Was this directed at me? Did you even read my post?

Thanks alot for the review, made me think twice about wich parts i choose :)

i'd prefer the HKS cast manifold over any of the others "stainless" manifolds though, they do work but they generally do crack after a few years regardless of how well they appear to be designed and built. you simply can't go wrong with cast iron for the most part, even chinese made it will outlast the car and do not feel bad about taking sales away from namebrands as most all do not sell manifolds any longer.

No, it wasn't at you.. And yes, i read your post. You have experience with it so you are in a place to talk about it. I apologize that it could have been interpreted as being aimed at you.

Its the idiots who just read one thing on a product and all the sudden are all knowing on the matter when they haven't even seen the product once. They spew BS that makes it a pain for those going through the thread. You gave a good review and unfortunately you got one that wasn't good as the QC is not very good. I read your post and found it informative, and I would be pissed if my manifold looked like that one, but the welds on my were pretty good and it fits a to4r just fine. My friend added an hks t5r with a vband adapter and had no problem, but another one of my friends couldn't get a 71mm Borg on it (granted he has an enormous t6 housing on it).

are you brett o_O and are u refering to mine ? its a t4. If not sorry I dont follow the forum often. There isnt very much of the original manifold left lol. enlarged the wastegate runners, cleaned out the poor cutting on the inside of the manifold , extended the manifold due the size of the borg warner.
https://s-hphotos-sea1.fbcdn.net/hph..._3965075_n.jpg

my FD manifold is fine(welded flange to clear fc intake manifold), along with my knock-off 50mm wastegate. 4 years strong!

which bw is that? and have picture how you extended the manifold?

Yeah, When I was over looking at your car georgi showed me how large your compressor housing was. Your compressor looks like size of the t6 when comparing it to my t04r, and even makes matts t51r compressor housing look small :)

It looks like he modified the manifold so that it fits further forward? I can't wait to see how your build turns out, it will be interesting to see how our cars compare as you have a bigger turbo, but I have more aggressive porting.