Our quest for the best sounding 4 cylinder exhaust has lead us to some weird places. (*cough*, true quad). But how do they stack up from a performance standpoint to a standard exhaust?
We old school motorcyclists went through this starting over 50 years ago. We learned that a 4 into 1 beat 4 individual pipes. And that a 4 into 2 into 1 (a Tri-Y in car speak) beat everything. Liked the vid!
It really depends on a lot of things. Bikes are a different beast because the capacity is small and internals are sturdy meaning you can rev out to 15k rpm which drastically changes things. Comparing say a big block V8 to a 1000cc inline 4 is apples to oranges. I appreciate that this Nissan is not a big block V8 but you know where I’m coming from
Yeah, but does it SOUND cool, that's what matters. At least in the case of my 650 twin it does, it's pretty slow, so might as well make it sound nice doing it.
Yeah but let's be honest here, exhaust performance gains, for street vehicles, is a min-max thing. Unless you're regularly going to the track, how it SOUNDS should be much more of a factor in deciding your exhausts than a single-digit horsepower gain at a very specific power band.
For a h pipe or x pipe to offer better performance they need to be placed in exactly the correct spot. The old boys found the right spot by putting some non high temp paint along the front part of the exhaust and going for a good run, the middle of where the paint burns off first is the exact place to get the best performance. I doubt you want to keep doing this but it's food for thought! ... also do a dyno run because realistically except for the obvious clear winner of stock setup the others are way too close to be accurate by looking over footage. That being said I'm loving your videos so keep them coming 😉
Yeah when I was making the exhausts I just put the H and X pipes in the most convenient spot, because performance wasn't on my mind. I was surprised that all of the setups except for the regular exhaust were basically identical times, I expected them to vary more. The Sony Vegas dyno definitely isn't accurate, but it gives us a basic answer as to which were better
@HatersGarage Please retry the x and h pipe with placement performance in mind. We need to know what is possible with 4 cylinder exhaust that actually sounds cool!
Literally one of the funniest and most entertaining and straight to the point automotive channels right now with Toms Refurb, I hope you see great success, keep up the good work 👍
I'd dog you for that Flowmaster because it's definitely making it sound worse, but "It's what I had" is an extremely valid response. Also, IDK if I mentioned it in the last vid, but KJK (the other guy who tried 1-4, 2-3) reported an increase in torque and mid-range with the even-fire UEL design at his 3x length ratio. Haven't gotten another update from him since, so there's only the build+startup+static mild rev. Really wanna hear that car under load to see if it improves, but anyway. Also, if you had a 1-4, 2-3 equal length, more commonly known as a 4-2-1 or tri-y, that was properly made, those see benefits across the board under 8000rpm. David Vizard and other builders of his caliber strongly recommend a 4-2-1 (1-4, 2-3 paired) equal-length header on any 4-cylinder that doesn't spin past 8k. Though it does involve a bit of math to tune the primary and secondary lengths and diameters.
I've heard that 4-2-1 setups make more low end power, and that's why OEMs use that setup. As far as tuning the headers for performance, I really wouldn't want to bother with that unless I had a dyno. Without it you pretty much just do the math and hope you got it right.
Thank you for adding more chapters to this interesting story. I stumbled on the original video way back when, and it's wonderful to find more of your experiments. Although I've been subscribed for a long time there's a thousand other video notifications that drown each other out. I'm sorry for not showing as much appreciation and attention as your honesty and humour deserve. Good luck!
This is great content, fast cuts, no bs and humor. I wasnt going to watch anything from anyone today, but curiosity of true-4 sound turned out to be 4 videos in a row. Noice!
I already got some 4-2-1 headers and I’ve been debating chopping them up into true duals for a long time. Glad I found your channel. Looks like you’ve been having a lot of the same crazy ideas as myself 😂
Was dubious of the channel name... but am well and truly glad I clicked on whatever random video that ultimately led me here. You take XYZ idea, you run with it, show the results, maybe BS for quite literally a few seconds and then out. No drama, no padding, no BS. You, sir, are to be applauded; bravo!
Science! I like that :) I would say that for power the best option would be equal lenght - 4-1 with long primaries or sequentially paired (1-3 2-4) 4-2-1. Of course with all the tricks like stepped piping, short colector. Perhaps maybe even venturi effect could help too (?).
I choose a 4x2 to my car even knowing thats not gonna make it faster because i heard it once when i was a child in the same model. I just wish it doesnt make it slower 😅 (already have the exhaust but engine is not ready to run yet). Thanks for the vids, i was looking for this at a long time. Whatching u from Brazil 🔥
My experience with can muffler is they should probably have a hollow resonator ahead of them unless you run the baffle which nobody does@@haveaniceface7290
In my experience building motorcycles, having some back pressure in the exhaust system over straight pipes helps performance. I have no idea why that is in all honesty, but my bike ran way better with some back pressure. In this case the “stock” setup with a muffler gives you some back pressure and likewise the 4 into 4 zoomies have virtually none, so I figured they would perform the worst. Thanks for the entertaining vids!
Glad this channel is getting attention now. I can’t believe you bought new parts, are you feeling ok that’s out of character? Thanks for the quality garbage content.
I really didn't have a choice, I wanted a real exhaust so I could drive the car again, but I didn't have enough scrap. Also my headers had been hacked up so many times they were basically trash
I would like to make a 4 cylinder sound like a v8, but that's like trying to convince someone that your donkey is a pure bred race horse. I could try the looping pipe, but I think it would just sound like a really clappy 4 cylinder still
@HatersGarage Actually maybe running two sets of split header pipes, one longer then the other that re-enters at the same collector. I'd have to figure some math out to find the optimal length to simulate a V8's firing order, but it might be worth a shot for fun.
Always hated how inline fours sounded, but is there any chance I could convince you into making a vid of a mustang style header where they made a flat plane kinda sound like a cross, well that and a different firing order
Awesome work and experimentation😮 Just did some research on a jet engine exhaust system that did some crazy stuff. 🤔 What about an overlap of both your ingenuity and that- all with just some of the things on hand? Like a exhaust turbine of sorts?
Now that's the gearhead content i want to see, yay ! I want to know and hear about annoying stuff like the flex joint IF stuff happens and is annoying ^-^,
What would a 4 cylinder engine sound if you make 2 headers? One that collects 3 cylinders and the last one goes separate and then combined at the end by a x or h pipe?
The one thing you never took into consideration is the distance between exit location of the pipes. Having the pipes further apart actually INCREASES the rumble sound. And closer together has a similar effect to a crossover. Listen to a corvette with a quad exit in the center. Ive even seen one with true duals (no crossover) and it sounded like it still had a crossover due to the exit locations. I actually built a true dual exhaust on my honda accord 2.3 about a year ago. My pipes exit on each side of the rear bumper kinda like an old muscle car. It has more of that aggressive rumble sound than even your true dual. Also, theres other factors that can have an affect, such as runner lengths, and overall pipe length on each side. An exhaust with a crossover or y-pipe with equal lengths from header to crossover will have a smoother sound than one with uneven lengths before the crossover, such as on a truck, where the exhaust will usually run down the passenger side. Muffler placement also has an affect.
Can you please re-do the 1-2 & 3-4 pairing but have one side’s exhaust pipe be much longer than the other, and the two exhaust pipes being further apart? Like side pipes for example? That would give you a true 45 degree v-twin kinda sound imo.
Is it possible that the increased times are a result of an altered/ less effective exhaust scavenging pattern? And what about cylinder pairing per pipe? (ie 1&2, 3&4; 1&3, 2&4; 1&4, 2&3.)
All of the tests were done on different stretches of road, but all were flat. I rechecked the times over and over, and the times for the abnormal exhausts were just very similar.
On this setup or the one before, try making one of the pipes twice as long as the other. Or try out different lengths to play around with the phasing, there’s a guy that tried that on his GSXR1000 and it gave it a R1 crossplane sound
Pretty sure you have to either tune to have proper fueling or add intake volume to benefit from the exhaust systems extra flow and add more fuel. Pretty sure stock maps cant adjust properly for the modifications so a tune is necessary.
2 factors on why the quads were slower. Since you have more pipe, there was more weight added. Having only 1 pipe will cause a higher exhaust pressure velocity coming out so it will flow better than having 4 with less exhaust pressure velocity.
Hi. From what I saw in previous videos with true dual exhaust you connected cylinders 1-2 and 3-4. I wonder what the difference would be if it was 1-4 and 2-3?
2 things that I can think off. The weight of the pipes and the backflow. Typically you want to have some backflow to the engine so it doesn't make vacuum pockets which steal potential power right out of the cylinder
I have two Flowmaster fxs on my Nissan Altima 2.5 and they sound great. Bottom line is the dual exhaust versions just flowed too much. I'm guessing if you would have used a smaller diameter pipe in your true dual setups it would have worked well.
I'm thinking of modifying my car's exhaust to run dual pipes, it has a 4-2-1 header from factory, so I think on just getting rid of the 2-1 part and run dual from there, but the issue is that there's a Co2 sensor that's needed for the engine to run properly. How would you tackle this issue? Putting the Co2 sensor in a X-pipe is a viable solution?
The true duals must lose too much mid range torque. One of them might make more power than stock but at redline, and that’s not real world driving. Only on the race track do you always use the upper range of the revs. It was interesting to hear the different pipes. Excellent work man!
maybe its because the 4 banger its even fire, when v8 pick up power with the x or h pipe its because of the oddfiring and equalizing effect of the flows in the exhaust, this 4 pulses go just one behind another.
Are you still wiling to experiment with exhaust sound? I have one suggestion. Split the exhaust in two ant he end, route one pipe back to front and reintroduce that back to the system. That should really mess the pulses up. At some rpm might even sound like double the cylinders.
