‘X’ Pipes

‘X’ over pipes were discovered during the Winston cup race series. One of the cars seemed to be consistently faster than anything else out there, and it wasn’t until the car in question had a racing accident and turned over that the reason became obvious. ‘X‘ pipes!

We have been experimenting with forms of ‘X’ pipe for a while now with mixed success. Part of the problem is in the existing CATs. On these cars the cats are now at least 10 years old, and sometimes as old as seventeen and have done over 200,000 miles. The ceramic core of the cat breaks up, and, along with exhaust by-products the cat becomes blinded and effectively chokes the engine - we saw a power drop of 60bhp on seriously blinded cats. Thats more than an old Mini developed in the first place!

The dyno run results for the standard ‘X’ pipe are encouraging. These results had to be compiled as they were taken on different days and because of software problems with the Sun rolling road, the system could not automatically scale them correctly. We intend to do a back to back test, same day. same dyno in the near future. A 12BHP increase is very worthwhile, and the effect when actually driving is quite marked - more urgent, and the sound is lovely, not as loud as an RMB but not intrusive either.