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I thought I would update my experience with the header install. To start off, finding a shop to do this was my more difficult than I thought it would be. Charlotte has, or at least what I thought, a good amount of performance shops that apparently do literally everything other than Lexus(s). I called a whopping 15 shops, including eurowise, eurofed, GMP performance, dynamic auto tune, mst mustang and performance, etc etc. No one wanted to do it. On my ISF, I had a boat mechanic install my headers. I had reached out to them to do it again but the summer time is their busy season and they were months out. Of course I wanted the headers installed ASAP. I finally stumbled upon a shop called After hours racing. Man, am I happy I did! These guys are amazing! I dropped my car off Thursday morning and had it back Friday morning. Install price was higher than I expected it to be, but I was happy to pay anyone to get them on and would pay again if I had to do it all over.
For the install,
I had planned on running the factory tune since, I wanted (still want too) do a nitrous setup. My thought was to get the extended 02 sensors to get rid of the CEL and ride around like that until I was ready for the n2o. After getting the car back....it sounded. Like crap honestly. I hated it. I thought to myself, wow, I just messed this car up. I was expecting it to sound like my ISF. But it was louder with more restrictions ( resonators & mufflers) and it was really raspy. After I drove off the lot, about half way home I noticed a grinding noise. The noise would go away when I would make a right hand turn, but would come right back after straightening the car out. I was very unhappy at this point. I called back after hours racing and said something isn't right.
For the fix,
After getting back to the shop and getting the car back up on the lift. We discovered the sound was coming from the driver side exhaust (the invidia portion of the exhaust) was rubbing up against a single subframe bolt. We decided the easiest thing to do was take that section of the exhaust off and hammer it in enough so it would not rub the bolt any more. After that, we took it back on the road and the noise level reduced a lot but there was still a little left over noise. We also learned that the stock engine mounts needed to be over tightened from 52ft lbs to 60ft lbs. This fixed all rubbing issues.
Once all that was addressed, the shop owner put the scanner on the car and suggested that we removed the extended 02 sensors as he had never seen the codes the car was throwing before and that the only thing we changed from the 02 sensors was removing the cat's and adding the extended 02 sensors. Man, what a difference. Finally got the car sounds and acting right! Now I am super happy with the setup and glad I went through with everything. I hope this helps fellow members if they ever run into something similar.
I Finally got around to installing the usrs. Also upgraded to one step colder plugs....that job ain't no joke, tightest engine compartment ever. I'm about 4k miles away from 60k and these plugs are dirty!. Andddd, I also decided to do a rear seat delete. I am currently working on a custom lightweight cover. Hoping to have it finished by the weekend. The goal isn't for it to be perfect. More so, it is to hide all the junk under the seats & reduce exhaust noise. It's definitely louder when you remove the rear seats.
Here's what I ended up with. Based off another thread, the rear bottom & top cushions weight in at 37.6lbs, each one of the boards I created weights just over 5lbs. Making a total savings of 27 lbs. Again not the prettiest creation but my goal was to lose some weight and reduce noise from the exhaust. Fit is okay, The bottom was a PITA and isn't 100% correct but isn't terrible either. I used the thinnest board I could find at Lowe's which was plyboard paneling that is .25in thick. The entire board was $30, and I still have left over. I will try and refine the remaining board to fit better in the future. Then I bought some gorilla spray glue & some speaker carpeting to finish it off. In total I'm at less than $100.
09-15-22, 12:50 PM
