As the monkey said to the shopkeeper. . .

The only progress I've made on this project since I received the actuator plate in August is to swap in the HGT sway bar. A number of weeks slipped away in August and September while I was busy with other things. Then in late September I got the idea to delay the three pedal conversion, the 599 MAF, and the 6-to-1 headers, until I had renewed the registration. For my car this year's renewal will require a Smog Check test. Smog Check consists of a visual inspection for modifications to emissions systems, then plugging the DMV's central computer into the OBD II port to scan for faults and modifications. If this process detects any aftermarket code you get a fail. This is why I decided to postpone my mods until I had got a Smog Check pass. So I am sitting and waiting for the renewal notice to arrive.

Here are some photos of my meager progress. First are some pictures of my poor man's lift system. It consists of four Harbor Freight 2-ton floor jacks, about $150 apiece. For $600 you get an easy-to-use 17" lift. These pictures also show the black safety stops I got, which prevent complete collapse even if the hydraulics fail.

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Here are some photos of the sway bar swap. The first photo shows the OE sway bar as installed. The second shows the HGT unit. The third shows the standard unit after removal. As you can see, the HGT sway bar is only 1.5 mm thicker than the standard unit. I confess, in my 7/10ths backroads driving I can feel no difference from the thicker bar. I get a tiny bit of bragging rights, I suppose, but at a cost of $1,500 for a used part. Kind of steep.

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Image Unavailable, Please Login Yesterday Fabio at Fiammenghi SpA sent me a photo of the tailpipes he’s made for my ‘05, and wrote that he’s doing the cats next.

 

Current registration expires in March.

 

I have learned this lesson many times with car projects, that the few weeks or months that one gains when acting under a false sense of urgency are quickly spent, while the downside costs persist.

 

Fabio at Fiammenghi has Whatsapped me some new work-in-progress photos of my exhaust system. Here are the 6-into-one headers. The first photo shows both sides, with the caption that they're ready for final welding. The second shows one of the completed units, with a kind of nose cone added to the middle where the six primaries come together.

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Here is a photo of the collectors, followed with one of the catalyst mesh. The mesh is located between the collector and the cone and tailpipe stub.

Years ago I read a story in a hot rod magazine that described a header collector as the fifth cycle of a four-cycle engine. When an exhaust pulse traveling down the primary hits the larger diameter of the collector, there's a pressure drop. This low pressure pulse travels back up the primary to the exhaust port. When the pulse hits the exhaust port during overlap it helps the atmospheric pressure at the intake port push more fuel/air mixture into the combustion chamber. The rpm range where this happens is determined by the length of the primary. The exhaust is described as having "tuned" at this range of rpm. It's what we feel in the old butt dyno when an engine seems really to get going as it climbs the rev range.

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Here's a picture of the mufflers. What you see is a secondary layer of stainless tack welded onto an inner box, what Fabio describes as a heat shield. These pieces will be final welded. Fabio also sent photos of the insides of the mufflers, showing their chambers and other proprietary trade secret stuff. He told me I could post these too, but that if you see them I'd have to kill you. Too much work, so I won't post them.

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Here are some bonus photos, first of the front wheel with a prancing horse emblem I stuck on these Hamann brand rims this week. I got these stickers way back in March 2021, shortly after I bought this car. But I only just now stuck them on. The second photo is one of the new "track day" tires I got recently. 325/30-21s. They're Dunlop Sport Maxx Race "track day" tires, only $140 apiece. I really like these big fat tires on this car. The car had 355/25-21s when I bought it. They rubbed from time to time. I can say with confidence that a 325/30-21 is as big as you can go with an '05 612. I was at a Cars & Coffee two weeks ago, parked next to a couple of Lamborghini Diablos which were also running 325 section tires. (Can you believe it, the tires on the older car -- a 1990 model iirc -- had date codes of 2005? A 200 mph car with 18-year-old tires. Yikes!)

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I know just the place: the Caldecott Tunnel. Eight lanes of two-thirds mile echo chamber:

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Thanks for the heads up. I'm doing the gated six conversion at the same time, so @360trev was already in the mix. As for the lambda sensor spacer, I've been running one in my '03 Pontiac Vibe daily driver since forever, which I installed to quiet a catalytic converter/O2 sensor error code. My understanding of the concept is that direct exposure to the exhaust flow causes code-throwing variations in the reading. The spacer presents a more static mixture to the sensor and prevents the codes.

 

Fabios's exhaust tips. Given the tight spaces under the hood, these are the only Fiammenghi components the public will be seeing, so it's nice that they're so pretty.

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Exhaust system nearing completion.

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I got an early Christmas present today. The renewal notice from the DMV arrived today. This being the second renewal since I bought this car in January 2022, I am required to furnish a passing Smog Check inspection certificate. I got one immediately. I am now in a position to go forward with my gated six conversion, the swapping in of 599 MAFs and air cleaner boxes, and the Fiammenghi exhaust system.

Another early Christmas present was the actual delivery of the Fiammengi components. Fabio shipped two boxes, and for unknown reasons they arrived six days apart, December 14 and 20. Here are some photos:

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Here are some photos of the components as works in progress: one of the mufflers with the bypass valve installed; the two cats, one with its heat shield and the other without; and the 6-into-1 headers in final form:

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I have also been busy on another front. In Post #25 I included a photo of a carbon fiber "aero" kit I got for this car in the early, fevered stages of ownership. The kit includes a rear "splitter," that had me going back and forth on whether to install it. Weighing in the minus column is the fact that it will require extreme and irreversible surgery to the rear bumper. There is also the question of good taste, but unfortunately for my car I have none

To mitigate the first factor I found and bought the most abused, disrespected 612 rear bumper I could find. Here are some photos of the bumper with the splitter set in place, to give an idea of how they fit together:

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