Lexmex

Since late last year you have heard me banter about this piece shown below. This flex pipe was a temporary piece put in place to solve an issue involving the joint previously here, that had made a loud clanging noise.

Well, as of two weeks ago, this flex pipe is no more. I can tell because the vehicle no longer makes this pssst sound like a turbo when I accelerate and I have noticed a bit more kick in the pants, but still no records, why? I still am trying to figure it out myself, but will still be doing more testing, though I do have warmer weather now.

This will be the next to last exhaust modification before I go home to Florida, which may now well be within the next 2 months. The final modification will be a large muffler at the end to limit the amount of noise that my RX emits.

The objective here was to remove the restriction caused by the atrocious length of the flex pipe, about 8 inches and place the y-pipe in front so as to increase power gains. If you have heard of the concept of long tube headers, this isn't too far out of the way, except, we don't have the headers off of the manifold, just the pipes extending further out toward the cat, which is now significantly further back in its position than on a normal RX300.

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Our good friends at Mofles Cuajimalpa, same guys who is installed that big black muffler as a resonator underneath my RX, did the work once again. They wasted no time in fulfilling my wishes and proceeded to cut the flex pipe off.

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Here's another shot of the area, and what we wanted to do was push the y-pipe to the front of the cat.

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A shot even further back and you will recognize some of the areas in the upper part of the picture.

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Then we proceeded to cut a section of the y-pipe in front of the flex pipe.

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There's the piece now cut.

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How's are little Magnaflow cat doing after one year? Nice and clean.

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Then we have to cut the y-pipe off of the rest of the flex pipe.

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Now, we have to open up these pipes a bit, basically stretch their mouths wide open, we will see why next.

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Now here is the cut section of pipe leading to both manifolds. What we plan to do here is weld the y-pipe we just cut out on to the front of the cat and then add piping from these areas here to the y-pipe itself.

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Then we proceed to cut some piping. This will be slightly longer, about 9 inches or so.

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Then we weld on the y-pipe to the front of the cat.

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Another shot.

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And I take some time out to admire the beauty that is the twin pipe off the resonator to the muffler.

Although I have considered in my remaining time here to upgrade this a twin 2.5 from a twin 2.25 inch, I am going to leave it as is, 4.5 versus 5 inches total isn't much.

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Still cutting the replacement pipes.