- SenK9
- Mugsee
- c2888
- HSVNME
Without the help of your lateral thinking, logic, knowledge and strength, this would have taken much longer than it already did. Also thanks to Jally for being the delivery driver, wokstar for taking some photos, and KRNAGE, Eiji, Kathy, Kam80 and Anja for the company.
Now, on to the business. I picked up the exhaust yesterday morning and was pleased to see that it is a nicely manufactured product. The welds are clean and careful and the fitment is essentially a 100% match to OEM, except for only a tiny hitch (which I'll explain further down). You can tell that attention to detail is high when it comes to the construction of this exhaust, which is not surprising considering that Fujitsubo manufacture exhausts for Nismo and their exhausts are also offered as a factory option in Japan.
Specs: http://www.fujitsubo.co.jp/product01.php?no=790-15462
Installation was fairly straight forward, it was a bolt-off bolt-on affair. There was a lot of time spent in the bolt-off part when we almost rounded off a nut. Mugsee and I spent almost 2 hours trying to loosen a nut between the front and mid pipes that had seemingly fused itself to the flange. SenK9 finally loosened the nut with some Selley's RP-7 and a strong arm.
After the new exhaust was attached, I noticed that there was a small gap between the bottom of the flanges on the front and mid pipes. The supplied gasket was not thick enough to fill that gap. c2888 confirmed that there was a leak there after I started the car and water (from condensation) started dripping out the gap, this was the tiny hitch I mentioned before. Being the pedantic person that I am, I asked HSVNME to drive me to Repco and he kindly obliged. There, we bought some Loctite Copper Maxx gasket goo. After returning and applying the goo around the flange, the gap seemed filled and I tightened all the nuts.
Before:
During:
After:
Odd spot:
Here is some Nissan engineering fail. In the last 2.5 years that I've had this car, the foam between the rear bumper and reinforcement bar had melted from the heat of the muffler. The two tabs at the bottom of the bumper that are normally attached to the reinforcement bar have also been snapped for a long time. After the OEM muffler was removed, I took the opportunity to remove those two tabs, which were just attached to the reinforcement bar and connected to nothing. Also note that the heat from the muffler has melted and fused one of the plastic clips holding the tab to another plastic bracket.
Initial impressions are that the Fujitsubo is not much louder than stock, only providing a deeper growl at low to mid RPMs, elevating to a slight rasp at high RPMs. This is ideal for me as the subtle difference is not intrusive at all. All I hope for is that the car's power and acceleration is improved.
