Side skirt exhaust
 

What does everyone here think about the viability of a side skirt exhaust on an '07 TL? I know it would have to be custom, but is there any other reason it wouldn't work?

I'm also looking into other engine mod's, I want to stay NA, but I can't even find cam's or anything?

I'm not looking for a race car, just a very quick daily driver.. I'm gunning for around 300-320hp after tuning, I think that sounds reasonable, no?

Also, what's up with the complete lack of forced induction parts for this car? Other than the comptech supercharger I can't find a thing out there. If in the future I got rid of my NA requirement, I'd personally prefer driving a turbo car everyday (it's easy to keep it quiet and slow as long as you stay out of boost) but I can't find a TL turbo ANYWHERE.

Lastly, this is an awesome site, I'm glad I finally found a TL specific forum.

Welcome, you bought a TL not a WRX!!!!!:thumbsup:

You've followed my saga? I'm ending up with my mom's 07. She needs to dump the front wheel drive due to winter driving issues, but since I'm in college it's a summer car for me anyway. I'm much happier with the TL anyway, at least now I won't be spending every second waiting to blow second lol.

The turbo kit I believe is in the stages of testing and everything right now. If you can get one to fab it up for you that would be great. As for the side skirt exhaust the only thing I can see being a problem is that the piping would be way to low unless you are keeping your car stock and then if you did it you would have two exhaust outlets molded on the back bumper but no tips coming out.

i c this thread going to no where

I think what I was trying to say is that you have a Acura TL its a luxury sport sedan not a WRX(Turbos,superchargers,turbo chargers, cams, etc...) . And your not going to get anywhere near 325whp without a Supercharger!!

Possible Performance Mods you might want to take a look at first

1. Intake-AemV2,Injen,Fujita
2. Exhaust-Greddy,Comptech,Tanabe,Atlp,and XLR8 (Also the J-pipe,precats, and test pipe or high flow cats)
3. UR Crank Pulley
4. Throttle body spacers P2R

This should get you started im sure more people will chime in about performance stuff

:no::whyme:

I already took a look at the back bumper, it wouldn't be more than a day's project to fill/fair those voids in if you're handy enough with fiberglass. After that just a quick repaint and you're gravy.

I also wasn't planning on dropping it (my driveway is SUPER steep, the car already bottoms out at stock height), but I wasn't sure if the space would be big enough for the tips without getting some body work done.

As far as the turbo, I'll be another one of the guys that says "I'll get one, as long as I'm not the first". I've seen cars that weren't tuned right blow their engine (ever seen an un-tuned WRX try and run 22lbs of boost? epic fail.) and that's not gonna be me.

myron, thanks for the input.

If you do the sideskirt I think you would have to do some body modifcations or it won't look right. If you do decide to do it cut off a little after the mid muffer and fabricate from there.

I think you should do some homework before thinking of something like this :2cents:

anarchy, that's pretty much what I was planning on doing. I'm gonna measure it this weekend, but I'm pretty sure there's no way a 3" pipe can exit from there, which oughta provide an interesting challenge, but we'll see. It's not a needed mod by any means, but it'd sure as hell be fun to have.

higdon, I thought you'd seen my username floating around the rex forums. I had been planning on getting an '02 hatch but the insurance on it was rediculous and the guy who we were going to buy it from backed out. We already own the TL so it's easier to do this.

I would get the AEM intake, I like their stuff a lot. injen never impressed me as much (my opinion, I know they have their followers too). Definitely avoiding the Greddy exhaust, their stuff is always really loud and I've noticed the same thoughts on here.

Fulani, this is my homework. I don't know how much more non-committed I can get than asking people opinions on an internet forum.

Oh, and finally, higdon, when I said 300-320, I was saying bhp, not whp. It was just a rough idea in my head based on the 260 the car is rated at + 10ish for an intake +15-20 for a full exhaust + whatever else I put in. I read the TL-S cams fit into the 3.2? Is that true? Those 3 mods would be plenty for me, and I'd imagine have power around what I was looking for.

Question, if you were to try and run your outlets through the side skirts, where are you going to put the mufflers? Unless, you don't plan on using any which won't sound good at all, especially on a TL.

If you get an intake go with the aem V2 intake? 3" piping may be a little too excessive. Do you plan on putting tips at the end of the piping or straight pipe all the way out.

I haven't heard of a turbo being made for this car. Who is doing it and is there somewhere where we can read about this?

What would be the smallest exhaust piping you'd use? I don't think I'd want to go anywhere under 2.5" (unless other people have and didn't find a big change.. I trust experience more than my gut), although that half inch saving would probably do wonders for the viability of this.

In a perfect world I would have striaght pipes faired into the side skirt on each side, just ahead of the rear wheels.

Then, you might have a problem. Even if someone does get a turbo kit running properly, you'd still have to wait a long ass time for a tune. People have tried, but the TL just seems to refuse any kind of tune unless you're willing to sacrifice some vital features.

jweb, the mufflers should still fit in the space allotted, but it will be much tighter. I still have to measure everything to make sure it's possible but I think it should be. I started this thread to see if anyone out there had done it already or if there was some massive, insurmountable problem that I had overlooked. I think the answer to both of those is no.

This whole 5 minute edit thing blows, btw.

Your gonna be losing ALOT of backpressure which is not good for the car already if you are gonna run dual 3 in piping. You are already removing the 3rd cat as well as the two mufflers and possibly shortening the exhaust length. You have to compensate somewhere to make up for the lost of backpressure.

Fair point, I'll pose this question then:

If someone asked you to set up side exhausts on their TL, with the main focus being on performance, how would you do it? Also, the car can't be over the top loud by any means. My area is full of cops, and unfortunately a superloud acura would get pulled over every 5 minutes for noise violations. I want the car to sound good, but I don't want it to be loud until I'm really getting on it.

Your car is gonna be loud no matter what especially if your running straight pipes from the mid muff back.

I would put my car on jacks get a tape measure and some string. Start measuring (that is what the string is for) from where I am going to cut to the original mufflers and then take another measurement of your ideal exhaust set up and see what you are going to be losing in terms of length. Are you going to be doing dual exhaust with dual tips or single tip exits.

I was going to shop around for a really good silencer to do this. I'll ditch the side exhaust idea before I'll ditch keeping it quiet.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/si...id=VIDLRVAUT08

That's something like the look I'm going for, but since the TL's skirts are concave, I would just put an appropriate cut on the end to make it fair.

Welcome to azine and congrats on the TL. With the 3.2, you won't be at 325WHP NA without some VERY serious modding, a bit of which isn't available to us to buy, but is custom.

1. The Exhaust- Routing it out the the sides would be pointless and impractical. Passengers in the rear getting in and out have a chance for being burned by the tips or the gases. Then you will have tons of soot on the side of the car from the by-products of combustion. Even with the two problems above, it would be very impractical since there isn't really much room to route the pipes off to the side along with a muffler cleanly, in fact you would probably end up hurting performance from the extra bends.

2. You mention tuning, at this time there is very basic, trick the computer tuning available to TL owners. If you have a ton of money to blow, you can try to have hondata tune you car, but you will first have to bring it to shawn at church's auto in california, then he will have to drive it to hondata and have them tune it, but results are ok, the last member that got a tune from there ended up with a blown motor. The TL's ECU is very hard to crack and to alter, so many companies do not even look at the TL for F/I. We are pretty lucky to have comptech make us something.

3. Mods to get you up to 300 WHP:

1. Intake
2. Big Bore throttle body
3. Polished and ported intake manifold
4. Ported and Polished intake runners
5. Motor refresh (rehone it, etc)
6. Valve grinding job
7. Pre-Cat deletes
8. J-pipe
9. 3rd Cat delete
10. Exhaust
11. UR Crank Pulley
12. Custom other pulleys (lightweight ones)
13. Intake manifold and throttle body spacers and gaskets
14. Innovative Motor Mounts

with all of this done, hopefully you will be near the 300 WHP mark as the 3.2 has about 225 WHP.

thanks csmeance, really helpful post.

1. I was thinking if I had it far enough back that burning would be a minor issue at most, and it would also keep the soot off the car better. I want these to be within 3" of the rear wheel well. I'll have to check out where people touch getting in and out..

2. That's a bummer, I didn't know the ECU was that secure. I had been thinking like a WRX owner where tuning makes a bigger difference than anything else :p. In the end I guess it could be worse though, at least it's one less thing to be concerned about.

3. That's a much longer list than I was expecting, but if tuning isn't an option it makes sense. Realistically I won't put all those in, but I was planning on a fair portion of it already.

Thanks again.

If you put all of those mods on you might as well go straight to the supercharger then slowly get the exhaust and all that other stuff.

I've been wondering about doing this on a Type-S. Possible? I'm guessing the costs are in the $2-$4K range, though.

If you talk to either atlp or exelerate or richies you can work out a bundle deal on some of the stuff that or keep your eye out on the black market. It ill probably cost you at least 4 grand if you want to do everything on the list maybe more.

for the exhaust you can take a page from Nascar design. They use flat wide piping from the middle of the car to the side skirt for clearance. It can be done with some good fabrication skills. For the HP issue you could just get a wet shot of nitrous.

Waste of time/energy/money, IMHO. If you do it for looks/uniqueness only, that's another thing. But for performance, straight waste of effort.

Check out stillhere153's idea's on a cut-out. If it were me, and it was for performance, I'd look at a cut-out somewhere around J-pipe - maybe just after it goes 2 into 1 or a bit futher back after the 3rd-cat/race pipe before the split at the y-pipe.

I think you'd get more gains than an after-market exhaust and still be able to use the stock mufflers for DD.

:2cents:


.

I was kind of more curious about just doing a port & polished intake manifold & runners. :toocool:
I've heard port & polish can open up quite a bit of horsepower, esp. on some American V8s, so I've been curious about on our cars.

Besides stillhere153, also look up Blackura_NY and his "Beautiful day for a dyno" thread.

Both are NA with just about every bolt on known for the TL. Blackura_NY dyno'd at ~292 WHP (IIRC). Assuming he gained some drive train effeciency, that'd be roughly equal to 330-ish crank HP.

I think Blackura's just missing the Pre-Cats, right? I think he'd gain quite a bit more if he is.

I thought (pretty sure) he added them and got about a 20 WHP bump.

Mostly the side exhausts would be for uniqueness. So far as I can tell it would be the only one, so definitely unique. I like the flat piping idea. I'll have to look into that.

I have considered the idea of cutouts, but if the side exhausts are too little backpressure, cutouts wouldn't have any performance gain would they? I don't know what kind of backpressure these engines like.

Spray is a non-option. Personal preference, don't want a sprayed car.

The reason I don't want to get the supercharger off the bat is in any engine I'd rather build everything NA then add forced induction. Less things break that way from what I've seen. I feel like a supercharger without doing the other work wouldn't be worth the money. It's also a much larger investment to make at one time, I can build the exhaust slowly, then install it, and then get the intakes, ect. ect.

20whp from precats? holy crap.

Depends. If you leave the pre-cats/primary cats in, plus J-Pipe, you're probably getting all the back pressure you need. Even with pre-cat deletes, J-Pipe, high flow 3rd cat and cut-out, you might be just fine.

I'm no expert, but I think back pressure is over-rated; that is you can get by with less than you might think. Just a guess on my part.

I do know cutting out the exhaust after the J-Pipe sounds bad ass as hell.


Regards 20 WHP from pre-cat deletes, check Blackura's dyno thread. Went from 27x to 292 IIRC.

I agree with you bearcat on the backpressure issue. If you look at true race cars they have exaust dumps right off the headers. The only reason they would run an exhaust with mufflers is because of class regulation. Even so bullet race mufflers are really just like Richiev6 test pipes. You may sacrifice low end torque but High end would pick up. Although a dyno would truly say if you lost any TQ.

the runners you can buy from excelerate on the boards. For the intake manifold, a shop or person would have to do it. I suggest a shop with a airflow bench so they can see the difference the porting and polishing made in the flow of the intake manifold so you get the most out of your money. Racinghart03 did his:

https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-performance-parts-modifications-112/big-bore-throttle-body-pics-08-tl-s-688423/

You wouldn't happen to know what company the intake runners would be under, would you?

And kudos for the link. :)