Another random bit…. I have this iPod Nano where the backlighting of the screen died a few years ago. It still worked otherwise, so I kept it. It has found a permanent home in the T. Before this Nano, I had the previous generation tiny square one. That one had the on/off button fail, so it stayed permanently in the S2000 as I had installed an Alpine head unit with iPod integration. That Nano stayed with the S2000 per the request of the new owner. Another random bit, I was doing some purging recently and found old mix CDs I made over twenty years ago. It is a good thing the Cayman still has a CD player! I kept three CDs, so they will live in the Cayman too.
A good amount of dirt and exhaust soot gets behind the license plate. The day after I got the car, I had it ceramic coated which is good for approximately five years. Traditionally, my cars lived most of their lives ungaraged, so I would wax them two to three times a year. I figured with the ceramic coating being good for around five years, it more than pays for itself in the time saved. My detailer said the paint from the Porsche factory was really high quality, but he didn’t detect any sort of wax protection. Maybe that is because Porsche offers XPEL paint protection film as an option from the factory. Anyway, if you do not go that route, I recommend getting your car paint protected one way or another right after you take delivery. With the ceramic coating, I just use high pressure soapy spray at the DIY car wash and all the dirt just comes off; no brush that would potentially scratch the paint. Ceramic coating is amazing. I follow up with spray detailer when I get home and that is it. In the 1400 miles I have driven the car so far, it has had one car wash and two oil changes. FYI, that hole in the middle is the rear tow hook attachment point.
How does my X-pipe sound? From inside the car, it is pretty hard to tell if there is any difference. A bit smoother I suppose? Maybe even a decibel quieter. The one thing I have noticed is that on a shift after being full throttle, there is less annoying ‘blat’ noise. Does it make any more power? I would guess it is within the signal noise level, especially at this lowly 300hp level. Someday when I am pushing more power, it should make more of a difference. At the minimum for now, I shaved off some weight and I like how they look which is the minimalist and purposeful motorsport style; that is in contrast to the fake tips on the 992 Carrera. I do have the first major upgrade ordered. The liftbars will make the task of getting the car up and down for parts install easier and be safer too!
Update: after having spent more time in the car, I noticed a higher frequency exhaust wail that I only hear when driving next to a wall. It reminds me a bit of external wastegate dump, but much lower in volume. I don’t think the stock exhaust tip sounded like this? You don’t hear distinct exhaust pulses, it’s more of just a constant jet noise. I attempted to capture the noise by driving through a tunnel using just my GoPro, so the sound quality isn’t great. The wind noise starts to get a bit loud halfway through send gear. This tunnel is up around 7000′ of elevation, so the car isn’t quite as quick up there.
4 comments
Some of the aftermarket companies (I think Soul?) were claiming no power gains on the 718 with a straight piped catback exhaust. Different X pipe tip design than yours though. Any thoughts?
Anything the baby 2.0 stock turbo can put out, not going to see much with the going cat back. Maybe on the bigger S or GTS turbos. Even then, not much gains to be had in the exhaust until turbo upgrade in my opinion. The only real bottleneck in the stock exhaust is the stock cat. Replacing that with a high flow sport cat is the best place to uncork restriction. Otherwise, the downpipe is huge and then that splits into the two approximately 2.5″ exhaust pipes that go to straight through mufflers. At the exhaust tip, text book loss coefficient for a 90deg bend is 1.1. A 45deg bend is 0.4. Mine is 60deg but I think gain benefit by not having the pulsating flows crash into each. Regardless, need a tune to take advantage of any potential flow improvement at higher power levels. Otherwise the stock ECU will just keep on hitting the programmed in torque target. Or if on crap fuel, better exhaust flow should mean less knock. But for sure, the stock cat is the major bottleneck. The other bottleneck is the small compressor inlet tube. Raggdoll Motorsport has a good upgrade for that.
Nice design. A little surprised you didn’t angle the cuts on the tips. Hopefully the crossflow design helps with scavenging. I imagine there’s a slight change in exhaust note.
I thought about the slash tip for about a minute. But it added two more cuts along with another area to add error and visually see any misalignment of the tubes. I figured flat cut was good enough for a GT3 racecar, good enough for me.