Has anyone tried this one yet?
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Too rich for my pocketbook. Last time I looked $1000.
That exhaust is good, but not the "Best" for performance. VW motors like and perform better with a single collector exhaust. But that one is hands down the best looking in my opinion. To bad I'm the anti JFL (Just for Looks).
Alex,
So single collector exhaust, means one muffler, regardless of number of tail pipes?
If he had crossed the pipes for #2 and #4 to go to the opposite muffler, it would've been a true tri-Y, and would have been all that and a bag of chips.
Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Nowhere, USA posted:If he had crossed the pipes for #2 and #4 to go to the opposite muffler, it would've been a true tri-Y, and would have been all that and a bag of chips.
Stan, seems like any easy remedy. Would it make that much of a noticeable difference?
Art posted:Alex,
So single collector exhaust, means one muffler, regardless of number of tail pipes?
No, single collector means all the pipes meet then it can split into 2 mufflers. This one goes from 2 pipes to one muffler on each side then it joins to one.
Thanks, Alex.
Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Nowhere, USA posted:If he had crossed the pipes for #2 and #4 to go to the opposite muffler, it would've been a true tri-Y, and would have been all that and a bag of chips.
Like this?
Vintage Motorcars - Alex posted:VW motors
FYI
That's a 356/912 engine. Notice the rectangular sump plate.
Glenn Ring posted:Vintage Motorcars - Alex posted:VW motors
FYI
That's a 356/912 engine. Notice the rectangular sump plate.
Yes Glenn, Just asking about the cross over pipes that Stan mentioned above
This is a Type 4, but it's a true Tri-Y from Tangering Racing. It would appear that I remembered it wrong: 2 and 4 are tied together, not 1 and 4, so what I said above would not work.
These exhausts give up a bit of top end for a marked increase in mid-range torque. A Tri-Y is really difficult to design, and even harder to build. Chris at Tangerine said he'd build one for a Type 1 several years back, but I decided to stick with the more common 4/1 header.
Rich Drewek had a Tangerine Tri-Y on his red car with the 2.6L Type 4 RAT motor, and it ran like a scalded dog.
I was thinking of getting the VS Sebring exhaust as well and was wondering the same thing: how does it compare to others in sound and performance.
Sound, of course, is typically a personal preference and, therefore, too anecdotal a measure. Concerning performance, however, when people say that other exhausts have a better performance profile, there is never any objective evidence offered.
Has anyone seen comparative stats or dyno reports?
No dyno numbers here but I recently switched from a canister exhaust to an A-1 Sidewinder Exhaust. It is on my 2110cc motor that produces 150hp. My "seat of the pants" dyno tells me it is much faster and flows much better. The magic that is supposed to happen inside an exhaust wasn't happening with the canister exhaust and now it does. My years of experience driving my Speedster like I stole it told me all I needed to know. And it sounds a lot better too.
@JoelP posted:I was thinking of getting the VS Sebring exhaust as well and was wondering the same thing: how does it compare to others in sound and performance... Has anyone seen comparative stats or dyno reports?
I have been a VW enthusiast and played (on and off) in the performance pool for close to 50 years now, and while I can't give you any "comparative stats or dyno reports" I can tell you they have been done and there isn't a canister muffler that comes close to equaling the power output of a properly built 4 into 1 header/extractor, which the A1 Sidewinder is a variation of. If you search you'll find Robert's experience above very typical of those who have switched from a canister style exhaust to either a properly built (notice I keep using those 2 words) extractor style header or Sidewinder (which is essentially a merged collector header turned sideways).
The Sebring style exhaust was built in the '50's, when exhaust science wasn't nearly as advanced. Although I've never heard one on an engine, they're supposed to sound great, but as Stan said, tubing needs to cross from one side to the other to be more efficient. Now the issue is packaging all that tubing within the confines of the back of the car and maintaining some semblance of ground clearance.
Like a lot of Vintage Speed's stuff (except for the shifters, which are perfect), their Sebring exhaust is lovely... and just a little bit flawed.
This (^) is a CSP "Mosquito" for a 36 hp T1. Notice how the primary tubes go through their mufflers, but stay as individual pipes all the way to the collector? This is the right way to do it, because even though the collector is in no way optimal, it is at least a collector for all 4 tubes which is what makes a header work as a performance enhancer.
This exhaust is nowhere near as good as a 4/1 header with a nice collector, but it's better than this:
Notice how the primary tubes dump into a canister muffler as two tubes on each side, then emerge as a single pipe? This is really the same thing as the "can" style exhaust, only not as good because all 4 pipes aren't going into the same collection area.
A good exhaust works by "scavenging" - each of the primaries has exhaust moving down the individual tubes. When they get to the collector, there is a venturi that acts like a Bernoulli tube, creating a vacuum on the entire system. This has the effect of sucking exhaust out of each cylinder as the exhaust valves open. It's almost a miracle
... if people would just bite the bullet and do what works.
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Thanks a ton. I find it interesting that people mention the length of the exhaust exit past the bumper on replicas, as I’ve seen a number of true Speedster Carrera GT’s with similar overlap. For example: https://youtu.be/XBJKRH0-vdE
The only difference, other than performance, is the shape of the exit and powder coating. Correct me if I’m wrong, but lightly shaping the exhaust exit to a slight horizontal oval at the tip wouldn’t substantially alter anything substantive; of course, I’m totally speculating.
Generally speaking, unless you are putting a potato in the pipe - nothing that happens after the collector really matters. As long as you have enough flow, you can do pretty much anything you want.
As Robert's pics show, the Sidewinder has good ground clearance. a Sebring where tubes cross to the opposite muffler- maybe not so much...
Stan wrote: "Generally speaking, unless you are putting a potato in the pipe - nothing that happens after the collector really matters. As long as you have enough flow, you can do pretty much anything you want."
As an example, Gene Berg offers a scavanged, 4-into-1 extractor exhaust that has a vertical separator plate at the very end of the extractor which then runs through a tr-bolt flange and into a "Y" branching left and right to two high-flow mufflers. The whole she-bang comes in four parts: The basic extractor system, two J-tubes and the dual muffler package with a triangle mount. Theoretically, it should be easy to change mufflers to get as much or as little noise as you want and if they're high flow versions it won't effect the extractor's performance. (Or so says my local Hot Rod Exhaust guy).
The downside is you have to be careful and really tuck everything up behind the rear valence so as little as possible is hanging down, but that's not really that hard to do.
After all this great info, I thought I'd call up CB Performance to inquire into the availability of an A-1 Sidewinder Dual Peashooter or Center Exit; I was surprised to hear that they don't have any in stock and told me to call A-1 directly. Not having my own Hot Rod Exhaust guy, I wanted to ask you fellas: is this normal or am I simply looking at post COVID supply chain shenanigans?
@JoelP posted:After all this great info, I thought I'd call up CB Performance to inquire into the availability of an A-1 Sidewinder Dual Peashooter or Center Exit; I was surprised to hear that they don't have any in stock and told me to call A-1 directly. Not having my own Hot Rod Exhaust guy, I wanted to ask you fellas: is this normal or am I simply looking at post COVID supply chain shenanigans?
Maybe email Greg Leach at Vintage Motorcars. He also uses a pea-shooter style exhaust on some of the cars so he may have a better idea on availability.
DC you asked for dyno results and here's a few. Obs these exotic engines are a bit different from our expanded lawn tractor mills but the exhaust principles are the same.
Down in the file a bit you see how he takes an ordinary 1500, punches it out to 1792, throws a ton of high-tech go-fast stuff into the case and ends up (with a street can exhaust) with ~120 hp. Which is pretty good!*
Then: "After testing was completed with the street exhaust, I couldn’t wait to test the engine with the 4:1 header mentioned above. The results were astounding!"
~144 hp. Torque went from 114 to 128 ft-lbs. He'd have gotten more power if he tuned the engine for the 4-into-1 exhaust.
So, expect 15-20 percent from a good merged header over a Sebring or hotdog muffler.
*For a $300,000 Holy Grail 547 engine.
@ALB posted:I have been a VW enthusiast and played (on and off) in the performance pool for close to 50 years now, and while I can't give you any "comparative stats or dyno reports" I can tell you they have been done and there isn't a canister muffler that comes close to equaling the power output of a properly built 4 into 1 header/extractor, which the A1 Sidewinder is a variation of. If you search you'll find Robert's experience above very typical of those who have switched from a canister style exhaust to either a properly built (notice I keep using those 2 words) extractor style header or Sidewinder (which is essentially a merged collector header turned sideways).
The Sebring style exhaust was built in the '50's, when exhaust science wasn't nearly as advanced. Although I've never heard one on an engine, they're supposed to sound great, but as Stan said, tubing needs to cross from one side to the other to be more efficient. Now the issue is packaging all that tubing within the confines of the back of the car and maintaining some semblance of ground clearance.
Makes me wonder, is the firing order the same in a 547 as it is on other Porsche/VW engines? Seems like if it isn’t, it would explain why Porsche didn’t cross the pipes on their original Sebring-style exhaust. Granted, exhaust tech has come a long way since 1950, but Porsche engineers weren’t dummies, either. AFAIK, that exhaust was used pretty much unchanged on all the mid-engine 547 race cars, from the 550 all the way through the 904. I’ve seen similar ones on Carreras, but I don’t know if those are standard of modified.
Will do, Rob. And thanks, Ed. I knew I came to the right place.
@dlearl476 posted:Makes me wonder, is the firing order the same in a 547 as it is on other Porsche/VW engines? Seems like if it isn’t, it would explain why Porsche didn’t cross the pipes on their original Sebring-style exhaust. Granted, exhaust tech has come a long way since 1950, but Porsche engineers weren’t dummies, either. AFAIK, that exhaust was used pretty much unchanged on all the mid-engine 547 race cars, from the 550 all the way through the 904. I’ve seen similar ones on Carreras, but I don’t know if those are standard of modified.
Same firing order.
@dlearl476 posted:Makes me wonder, is the firing order the same in a 547 as it is on other Porsche/VW engines? Seems like if it isn’t, it would explain why Porsche didn’t cross the pipes on their original Sebring-style exhaust. Granted, exhaust tech has come a long way since 1950, but Porsche engineers weren’t dummies, either. AFAIK, that exhaust was used pretty much unchanged on all the mid-engine 547 race cars, from the 550 all the way through the 904. I’ve seen similar ones on Carreras, but I don’t know if those are standard of modified.
You can use a 356 distributor on a Type 1 engine (not exactly optimal, but it will work) so I've always thought the firing order was the same. And yeah, I know the P engineers weren't dummies, but I'm still going with they weren't there yet with that level of exhaust knowledge. Remember, they were probably tickled with the unheard of hp levels they were attaining and were probably working just as hard to make the car handle and stop reliably with that new-found power.
It's good to remember how the race engines were used, and how long-tube headers with extractor collectors make power.
The 547 engine with Spyder cams peaked at 6200 RPM and could rev above 7200—and that's what the transaxle in those cars was geared for it to do. The Spyder's weight, gearing and entire purpose was set to run full-tilt-boogie down the Mulsanne Straight and top 135 mph.
To get maximum power at max RPM the exhaust pipes had to be short and as non-restrictive as possible. The Sebring setup did that.
Now, what do our cars want to accomplish?
They should look fine, make lots of noise and, if we're doing it right, launch us out of corners and parking lot aprons. That means we want more torque, and especially so in the low and midrange RPMs, where street driving in America happens.
To get more low-end grunt you want longer exhaust tubes. That's what a "tuned header" means: the tubes are all the same length, and that length corresponds to the RPM range you want to feel a bump in power. In general, longer means lower RPMs.
All things equal, an extractor 4-1 header will pay dividends over a non-tuned "hotdog" muffler with pea-shooter pipes as was found on old Bugs and 356s. And it's especially good for a bigger, cammed-up engine.
But it's not necessarily way better than the actual 4-2-1 race exhaust the Porsche engineers went with, if max boogie over 5500 RPM is the only goal.
I don't know. I think I'm with Ed on this one.
I get 147 ft. lbs. out of a 2165cc, and from 3000-6500 rpm(it's 139.3 at 6500), torque is never below 140 ft. lbs. Flattest torque curve I've ever seen.
I have Greg's Spyder exhaust, which is also known as a Tri-Y, or 4-2-1.
This exhaust was used on the engine dyno down at Jake's shop in Georgia.
I don't know why it works, just that it does.
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@Robert M do you - or anyone else for that matter - have any experience with Greg’s performance exhaust? Frankly, I initially assumed that option was merely VMC installing a third party system. If I’m wrong, I would love to hear anyone’s opinion.
@JoelP posted:@Robert M do you - or anyone else for that matter - have any experience with Greg’s performance exhaust? Frankly, I initially assumed that option was merely VMC installing a third party system. If I’m wrong, I would love to hear anyone’s opinion.
No first hand knowledge of the performance exhaust, other than the one on my car, that Greg is using. After feeling the difference between what I had and what I have now, I'm convinced this is the right exhaust for my car. And I'm fairly certain Greg is getting all of his exhaust systems from Tiger at A-1 Performance. A-1 Performance is in Santa Ana about 15 miles from Greg's shop so it's super convenient.
@JoelP posted:After all this great info, I thought I'd call up CB Performance to inquire into the availability of an A-1 Sidewinder Dual Peashooter or Center Exit; I was surprised to hear that they don't have any in stock and told me to call A-1 directly. Not having my own Hot Rod Exhaust guy, I wanted to ask you fellas: is this normal or am I simply looking at post COVID supply chain shenanigans?
I don't believe CB Performance is an A1 dealer.
They were. They just recently are not. They even still have the A-1 stuff on the website.
I think aircooled.net sells A-1 stuff.
Got ahold of A-1 directly (714 836-7201 tigerperformance@aol.com) via Facebook. Attached the newest catalog. Looks like I'll be going this route. I will say, the looks of the VS Sebring style exhaust are tempting, but I'd never forgive myself for going for form over function; that is, function that I care about. If I cared what everyone thought about my car standing still, then VS would be the way to go.
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