I am rather low, and am concerned about ground clearance and how it will fit with the factory crossmember. I know I’m gonna need to notch the factory cross member for just about any header out there, so that’s not an issue.
any pics of this, or a similar header installed? ground clearance, etc.?
I’m running an eBay replica on mine, but I’m assuming the design will be fairly close to the same… Ground clearance isn’t bad. My car is lowered, but by no means is it slammed. You have to notch the crossmember quite a bit, more than I initially thought… here is a picture of the clearance, compared to a Sprite can:
Here is ‘approximately’ how much you have to notch the crossmember:
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Here is a picture of the header itself… eBay special, was something like $89 shipped:
lowered about 4". the rear is actually about 3/4" lower now, than in those pics. borderline slammed. to compensate for the height differences between yours and mine, i’d say I’m probably about 2.5" lower than you. so the clearance, admittedly is a little scary. but, riding this low, I’m used to it. there aren’t many places that I go where I run into issues, as I know what to avoid.
also, how much did you have to add to get it to reach the cat?
thinking i’ll just go with an ebay cat, and have it extended to fit. it has a 2.5" inlet and outlet. though the Greddy SP2 I have is 2 3/8". think that will be a problem? or will I have to have a flange welded on for it?
“For Off Road Use Only” - This looks more like a test-pipe than an actual catalytic converter. I doubt that unit would pass emissions. So if your state has strict emission laws, you might be out of luck when running that one.
But as far as the slight differences in size (2 3/8" VS 2.5") would pose no problems. Your midpipe should already have the 3-bolt triangle flange on it, and I’d bet that all the bolt holes would line up, so I dont think you’ll have to do any flange work… Just extending to fit your particular length requirements. Then all you’ll need is the 2.5" donut-gasket to fit the header/cat end.
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Forgive my picture whoring
This is my cat once I was done welding it etc… its a 2.5" in/out CarSound (MagnaFlow) Spun-Cell cat. The body itself is only 9", then you have to extend to fit and add flanges. The body was $80, and the piping/flanges was like $30 more. And yes, this is a 48 State Legal cat, my car was able to pass emissions running this.
It still needs to be painted with some high-temp stuff, but it should be fairly resistant to corrosion when its done.
3/4" lower than that is only borderline slammed!? Damn, I must be getting old. Although I don’t feel like yelling “get off my lawn and raise up that car!” so I guess that’s something…
Pfft, air still gets between the ground and the bottom of the mud-flap! No where NEAR slammed!!!11one
All joking aside, being much lower than that with a 4-1 is going to be dicey… Hopefully you never hit a pot-hole on the freeway, that could cause some real damage.
I am very fortunate that the roads in my area aren’t TOO bad. most of the areas that have “iffy” roads, I know to avoid. The only thing I would be worried about, would be if there was some kind of foreign object in the road. If, after the install, the clearance is a bit tighter than I’m comfortable with, I’ll raise the car up a little bit.
No issues on mine… I installed it with the radiator out (my whole front end was in pieces due to being painted) so it was very easy to install straight through the radiator support. Also, Im not running the AC fan, but I dont think there would be any clearance issues if so. The Radiator fan shroud sticks out further than the AC fan and there are no clearance issues on the rad fan.
Here’s a picture, bad angle actually, but its got quite a bit of room down there.
awesome. Yeah, I’m not running with AC or anything, either. So, that one wasn’t going to worry me. I’ve seen some 4-1 that go farther forward than others and have required trimming of the radiator fan housing.
on a separate note, in your pic provided, it actually did provide me a shot of something I’m curious about. in the area highlighted (hope you don’t mind me modding your pic):
that area underneath my battery, there is a big round canister device under there. what is it for, and what do I need to do to remove it? It is god awful in looks. trying to clean up the bay a bit, while the motor is out.
Round canister thing? Pics?? I dont recall anything under the battery tray…
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Unless you’re talking about the air-intake resonator? A big black box about the size of a milk-jug? Its held on by three bolts, you have to remove the passenger-side splash shield to get to it.
Are you talking about that big ugly ABS thingy? I never bothered to learn the names of all that crap but I know there were several things in that area in my GS-R (that were ABS specific).
