I forgot what stage I'm on

...must...stop...buying...crap....

Just when I'm on the cusp of getting the car finished, I pull the trigger on an idea that I previously had but gave up on.

I until recently I settled on a mature sounding Tanabe Medalion Touring cat back exhaust and was just seconds away from buying it. Then I saw this Youtube video.

In import car world we have a name for cheap straight-through exhausts that are designed for maximum power gains with little regard for the awful noise they make: Fartcans. They sound like farts, or a bee buzzing. The car in the video is just a straight open exhaust, no muffler, no cat and it sounds amazing. That is the sound that fartcans try to capture, but fail miserably.

Unfortunately, running an open exhaust on the street is tee-minus-ten-minutes-to-ticket-time, even though those bastard Harley swine (sworn enemy of the import driver) get away with it.

Lucky for me, being an engineer and having experience in the lighting industry, I've come up with a solution that I think might just work.

#1: The exhaust cutout.

An exhaust cutout is basically a muffler bypass. Now that my catalytic converter is gone, the most restrictive portion of the exhaust is the muffler. Solution? Weld in this puppy before the muffler. ...but wait there's more.

#2: The cutout controller

This device replaces the momentary toggle switch control with a self calibrating 0-100% device. Most important is the trigger wire that when energized will open the valve to 100% then turn off the motor.

#3: The timer relay

This has a trigger wire too. A momentary or continuous input on the trigger input will start an adjustable timer. During the countdown, a relay contact is closed. This relay will be wired to the trigger on the controller.

The idea is to trigger the timer with the vtec solenoid signal, which will open up the cutout when vtec kicks and for a set amount of time afterwards.

Why? To scare children of course!

Disaster Plan

The stock header has been removed. Glorious victory over my mechanical foes, tube socks and all.

For those of you attempting this feat of endurance, remove everything that can be removed that can possibly come into contact with the header as you remove it. Keep track of your nuts and bolts - there is going to be a lot of them.

I actually ended up using a pet leash around one of the primaries as I removed the last nut from the header so it would not fall. I held the header up with my teethses.

DC race header shows up on Monday. Still no word from any of the local Hondata dealers about sending the ECU off for the reflash. The good news is that I'm going ahead with the reflash too. What does the reflash do, you ask? well:




Notice the massive amount of midrange power increase, and this is in addition to the 8-12hp gains already realized from the intake and header combo. Before, if you shifted before the rev limiter at 8300, you would fall off the big cam and end up in the rut, shown in green @ 6000 rpm. After, not only is the rev limiter increased to 8600, but shifting at 7000 rpm puts you back down into meat city around 5200.

Theoretically, the stock 5800 rpm Vtec engagement and gearing will allow you to always be on the big cam. In the real world, you are not going to downshift from 5800 rpm, to 8000 rpm, decel to 7500, accel to 8300 rpm and then have to upshift again. By making the big cam range wider, you downshift less, saving time and making the car faster than if you had just increased the HP. Blah Blah Blah...I know, but seriously: A stock WRX puts about 160-170hp to the ground. By the end of next week I'll be putting at least 210 to the ground in a car that weighs 400lbs less than a WRX, and will out slalom a Viper all for what I would have paid for a WRX. The bang-for-buck ratio would have been great if I hadn't also had to sell my soul to make it happen.

Here we go again.

It does not seem like 3 months since I started this whole take-apart-put-back-together mess, but then again I started planning the whole operation over a year ago when the first technical specs for the 2006 Si came out.

Anyway, my plan was to pull off the catalitic converter section and have an approximate replacement made without the cat elements. Turns out the header and the cat section are a 4-2-1 header and are designed to work together. I've decided to go with the crappy DC race header instead.

So...I'm flying the jackstands again in the process of taking off my header. So far, I've got two cuts and have broken a $50 plastic piece and still can't get the header heat shield out from the engine. Things are not going so well, but I'm determined to make this work.

The moment I get the stock header out, I'm ordering the DC.