Project R35 GT-R, Saving Weight With a Greddy Titanium Exhaust System!

As we have complained about before, the R35 GT-R is a big heavy beast. In our previous segments of Project GT-R, we were able to carve off about 60 lbs of weight from the car whose tank-like stock 3840 lb mass is pretty impressive and not in a good way.

We are still in search of ways to reduce the car’s weight since we will be adding some weight back into the car as we start to modify the engine.  We anticipate that most of the weight gain will come as we add cooling capacity in the form of a bigger radiator, oil cooler, intercooler, and transmission cooler.

In the meanwhile, our first ventures into getting more power out of our car meant that we needed to increase the breathing capacity which means a freer flowing exhaust system.   The stock exhaust is super heavy and we felt that we could easily lose a bunch of weight here if we picked the right replacement exhaust.

To meet our goal of having an exhaust that could balance weight with noise and free-flowing was the Greddy Supreme Ti.  The Supreme Ti is handcrafted out of titanium tubing for minimum weight despite its large diameter.

On lightly modded GT-R’s you can get away with the stock rear exhaust section if you replace the Y-Pipe.  The Greddy Y-Pipe is 80mm from the downpipes merging into a  huge 94mm single tube for maximum flow.

It is hard to get large diameter titanium tubing so the Greddy tubing is hand formed from titanium sheet and then hand TIG seam welded.

Sometimes we might have been critical of this sort of fabrication when done as a show statement but in the case of this exhaust, it is a must. Titanium has a lot of spring back and with lightweight thin walls and large diameters, it is impossible to mandrel bend in the tight radiuses needed to fit into the car’s undercarriage.