i know this is probably a dumb question that i as a "car guy" should know, but what exactly is a Y-Pipe and what does it do? i know it's somethin for performance right? what do you get from it and how much? thanks in advance y'all.

 

Go behind your car and look under it. See the pipe that splits in 2 to connect the 2 mufflers together? Thats the Y-pipe. If you get an axleback exhaust system, you'll have to reuse that same Y-pipe. If you get a catback system, you'll get new mufflers along with a new y-pipe without the 2 resonators. People say that the resonators reduce overall HP, but removing them will make your car louder so it's a tradeoff.

 

If ya take a look underneath the back of our cars, you will notice that the single exhaust pipe branches out to two leading to the dual "mufflers". The part that splits into two that looks like a "Y" is the Y pipe.

Not really for performance, headers are for performance.

 

This is a question I have had in my mind ever since I first saw the 98 Accord V6 when it came out. Why the dual mufflers at the rear end of the car when the exhaust travels down a single pipe from the front end through the catalytic converter. If you look at the new Honda Pilot SUV and I think the MDX both of which has a 3.5 V6, there is a single muffler with dual exit pipes. Anybody have a good engineering reason why. To me it just looks a bit better but is more expensive to replace. I asked the dealer and they didn't know except to say that there must be a good reason or Honda would not have done it.

 

My best guess is that we're using "Y" pipes instead of striaght through dual exhausts for emissions and fuel economy.

The catalytic converter requires quite a bit of heat to function properly. So, it's probably a cost effective way to reduce emissions and improve gas mileage.
A dual exhaust would require 2 cats and they'd need to be closer to the engine to work. OR the Engineers would have needed to have our VTEC always engaged. Which would be great for those of us who want to drive fast and waste gas all the time. But, I'm assuming they went for the middle route and chose the setup best for the common driver.
Probably also helps us increase torque a little. We've seen dynos here that show a slight dip in TQ when headers are added (freeing up exhaust in the same way as a dual exhaust would) at low-mid RPM.

Anyway....you could do a ton of research on the combustion engine. But this is just my .02 for today.

 

more flow less back pressure quieter design...the amount of packing element in an mdx is about the same if you seen the stock mufler of the mdx you will see that the tl is nothing compared to it....with the tl there isnt that much space to pack in a mdx muffler underneath so by spliting the muffler packing material to 2 mufflers the quietness can be achieved equally to the mdx...just my 10 cents

JON LERD

 

"car guy 101" you should have known better! kman, run a search first last post on the mdx cat/tl was right on! apples and oranges