I'm not any good with welding, or have any hook ups like that. But what about if I got that header, and then just kept the stock manilfold, with the cat, and installed the stock stuff whenever I had to do that emissions thingy? Is that a possibility? Don't get me wrong this is totally awesome what you are doing, I just don't have the skills, time , or facilities, and I want a free flowing system up front as well.

 

Well here in Oregon, in the particular county I live in, you don't have a new car tested for 3 years, then every year after that. So it wouldn't to be much of a pain in the ***. I could handle that frequency I think. I almost have one year on the car now, so my first reverse swap wouldn't be in another two years.

 

Umm ok so I was looking at that Mazdaspeed header, and the Hp Racing header. The Mazdaspeed one is like $723, and the HP Racing one is right around $200. WTF? Are we paying for a name brande difference here, or what? I mean if they are both bent the same and have the same diameter, shouldn't they yield about the same improvements? I'm far from an exhaust specialist, but perhaps somone could enlighten me if that HP one is a hunk of crap or what. I know you usually get what you pay for, but this doesn't make any sense to me. Any opinions from a more educated person in this field would be much appreciated.

 

Is the HP Racing one similar to the Mazdaspeed (a 4-2-1 configuration)? I don't think you will get enough horsepower gains out of replacing a header to justify $700. Just spend that money on some other good stuff. When I have worked on V8's in the past we get our biggest gains from the intake, carb, and camshafts (not that anyone will be replacing the carb in their Protege). You also get good gains from lightening the load on the engine (bye bye smog pump). Those Mazdaspeed ones look sweet though. I would like to have those if I had tons of money to spend on my car. Just take that money and get a good exhaust system and add a CAI. Cost about the same and you will probably get better gains. What someone needs to figure out is how to get rid of the damn cats and fooling the ECU into thinking that they are there. That would yield some horsepower.

Oh. And Mazdaspeed and HP will both have legal claims to their designs. So they will have to have different tubing and bends. Plus Mazdaspeed would have had more time to tune their header that HP could not afford (something about having lots and lots of financial backing).

 

Ahh I see, well I already installed a Bosal catback, and an Injen CAI, so I will probably do the HP Racing one. With the money I save, I'll get the intake, and exhaust cams. Thanks for the advice guys.

 

Okay. It's all together and running. No leaks, looks good. I took several pics that I'll have to get developed and put on CD ROM so I can upload them. The car runs great. I will still need to replace the rear muffler with either the sport exhaust or something that flows better. The stocker and the pipe that go to it are the most restricted points still. The pipe is only 1 3/4" ID from just forward of the muffler. The rest of my system is now 2" ID at the smallest point. I'm going to dyno it soon.

 

Traveler, thanks for the excellent information on the exhuast and camshafts. We need more specific information like that in this Forum. Keep up the good work.

 

Dyno appointment 9 AM Tuesday. Let's see what this baby can do! It costs $75 for 3 pulls and they give you printouts of all three. The place I'm going to uses one of the high end Dynojets so I'm sure it's going to be pretty accurate. They do a lot of work for race teams in the area.

 

I don't know what you mean by "all-motor"? Are you talking about actual drag race cars or modified street Protege's here? Because for a fully tuned engines those gains sound about right but not for our stock engines. You would need a massively tuned engine to get anything better than a few horsepower without something radical like turbocharging. Still Sweedenhouse if you already have some good stuff it couldn't hurt to get some new headers. Just look and see if you can find something better to spend your money on first. Return on investment and all that stuff.

 

I hope everything works out great for you, I'm anxious to see the gains.

Just to set the record...
You have reworked the front section of the exhaust system around the cats and installed a camshaft. Did you install just an intake cam? Also, Do you have a 2.0L engine or the 1.8L?

 

hey traveler i don't know why you are so worried about your emissions because the intake cam you put in will not pass you the emissions test, so why put all of this work into it?

 

Don't have to have emissions testing where I'm at. I know that the web sites that you order the cam from all say "not emissions legal". But that doesn't necessarily mean that it won't pass. Just that you aren't supposed to do it! I'll install the exhaust cam in another month or so. I'm going to get the sport exhaust next, then the exhaust cam. Pretty much as I can afford things.

The main reason I modded the exhaust this way is to see what it's capable of. I'm doing a dyno run to see what it puts down before I take the last restriction out when I replace the rear section and muffler. At that point, the exhaust will be 2" inside diameter or slightly better from front to rear. Accounting for wall thickness that's about 2.15 to 2.25 OD. That's a big improvement over the stock stuff. If it doesn't make a big difference even after the sport muffler, I'll look into chucking the primary cat and putting a header on. I'm trying to milk some performance out of it without making it a 'dirty' emission ride.

 

Dyno is done. See the post on 'dyno: cams and exhaust'