Friday, February 02, 2007

Exhaust pleasure?!


Well my main pain was going to be getting a bespoke exhaust made. Possibly £800 of pain.
Luckily I noticed a Caterham manifold for sale. The fat redline is the bulkhead, it will fit!
With this I can then buy some prebent sections of 2.25" tube and make my own side exit exhaust.
I can pickup two bike silencers and butt them end to end and make them one running along the sill.
This manifold is hardly a performance item the primaries are well short and its 4-1! However the caterhams work ok with it, it works as well as the stock K manifold.
The custom made system would give 10HP and 25lbs of torque increase low down compared to the stock MGF/VVC/Elise manifold and this caterham one. However the saving in hassle having to trailor the car somewhere, pick it up, pay a fortune is more appealing at the moment, also its a days work say to get a system on it now. Saving time.
Hopefully with this manifold I can make an entire system for £150 and retain the standard torque levels and obviously make more power with cams and induction. These caterham manifolds can make 185-190HP before becoming too restrictive, you just won't get the torque a nice made 4-2-1 gives.
It'll come together fast soon!
I am also a bidder on a stock 1.8K head with QED cams 425M some bloke has been relisting with a lower and lower startprice its now a steal.
This cam spec and head will give near on 165HP. Saves me quite a lot cash on sorting the VVC one with new cams etc.
The car is gonna be using the normal rear suspension for a while so it'll probably help it last :)
I can keep the VVC head and port it and do something with it in the future...If I went to 285cams ported it and converted it to mechanical followers it would be good for 185hp, which is the limit of the stock pistons.
I want to get the thing rolling again asap. Best leave something to fiddle with later!
Hopefully should have ALL the ingredients soon.

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