Gutting Y-Pipe

I have a good used one for sale, that will be your best bet for now.

 

I've been wondering about this. Certainly a lot cheaper than buying a test-pipe style y-pipe. Probably wouldn't even upset emissions testing (on a 2.7 anyway), since the bypass is probably not open during a typical smog check.

I've busted up a ceramic core cat with a tire-iron before. Not sure what type of cat is in the y-pipe though.

 

I am soon going to be making myself a test pipe style Y-pipe for my 5.2 and I may make a jig for it so I can make others later.

 

I might just pick up the Kreissig ypipe, it is more than the fabspeed but looks amazing and has a different design.

I spoke with a guy at Competizione here in VA and they said it is a gigantic pain in the ass (not their EXACT words, heh) to gut the secondary cats.

 

Try Bradan. I purchased my y pipe for a 2.7 from them. Nicely made. They had a sale and I paid quite a bit less than $1000.




Jimmy

 

I forked over the money for the Fabspeed one and I'm happy with it but I now realize that I could have just gotten the headers from them and saved a lot of money on the y-pipe and test pipes. both items run you 1800$ at Fabspeed and you can get both for less than 1000$ from reputable manufacturers. Bradan had a y-pipe sale for I think 500$ and you can find brand new test pipes on eBay for 300$.

 

Fabspeeds are $1495 for the 5.2.

 

If you're worried about appearance, you can get the y-pipe ceramnic coated in black. It looks not bad.
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I have a 2.7, sorry should have mentionned it

 

Gutting the y-pipe would not upset emissions testing on a 5.2 either. The car just gets plugged in and as long as there are no codes related to emissions it passes. Gutting the y-pipe wouldnt cause any codes because there are no O2 sensors down or up stream of it.

 

got it done at releasecoatings.ca (ask for Carlo)

Should cost you no more than 100$ for ceramic 2100 degree coating inside and out. Will also help keep the engine bay cooler.

I did my Fabspeed headers, y-pipe, test pipes and heat shields and it cost me 400$

 

I gutted mine...wasn't easy, but definitely a good thing to do. The cats are metallic, so I cut a window in the pipe to get to them easier to tear them out. Then I welded a section from a larger stainless pipe to close the 'windows'. Of course I positioned the cutouts on the bottom so they can't be seen, and I ceramic coated it inside and out.

Here's two pics showing the whole piece as well as an up close of the welded on cover (after coating obviously).
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The ceramic coated OEM headers you sold me work great and does appear to be cooler in the engine bay. One thing I notice is the exhaust note is a bit different at low RPM. Possibly due to a smoother/slicker surface inside the tubes allowing a faster flow of gasses as hypothesized by an automotive engineer friend.

 

Are those Fabspeeds?

I would think that with the amount of work it was to gut your cats, it would have been easier to just cut them out and replace with a piece of pipe - might flow better too.

 

And how would you get the outlets to match up perfectly? Make up a jig? I don't think so!!

 

I did mine like this. I bought a second hand y-pipe, operated on it then sold my original pipe for more than I paid for the first one! Why waste 100s (1000s) of dollars on buying a ready made item? I didnt notice any differences before and after anyway. Just seemed like a good idea at the time!!

 

Your car is the jig. Cut out cats, install the rest of the bypass in the car and tack in plain pipe. Then remove and weld all the way around. I'm not sure it's any more or less work than how you did it, though.

 

I can see this would work but it would take time to "fit" the plain pipe into the gap created from the gap. Plus, in my case I dont have welding equipment available so I would have had to hired someone to do the welding in situ instead of taking the pipe to a shop and getting them to weld up the "inspection" plates. Wouldn't have worked for me but if you have the equipment and the expertise then its a goer.

 

No, these are OEM without the heat shields, but with ceramic coating. This is much, much simpler than starting from scratch and making your own. As John mentioned, the inlets and exits already match up perfectly.

 

Has anyone that modified their factory secondary bypass pipe been happy with the modification?

Are there any changes in sound, or decreased heat without the internal restrictions ?

I had purchased the Bradan y-pipe but recently started thinking about buying a second OEM y-pipe and modifying the internals just to keep the factory appearance.