How much extra HP does the CAI give the 6s? Also talk to Rep. at racing beat exhaust and was told a total CAT was not nessesary for extra HP.He said it only made a 2HP differance!? Any feed back would be appreciated[sm=dontgetit.gif]

 

it all depends on what engine you have in your car as to how much power you will gain.

but from what ive read these cars love mods. its something like 10-20hp on a cai and about 7-14hp on the cat back exhaust

a "total CAT" i have no idea what it is your talking about

 

I got the terminology crossed I meant cat back. I have the 3.0l and I am trying to learn a little bit about the engine.I am worried about the CEL coming on as well. As I read some of the comments it seems to be more trouble than it worth and when they told me a Cat Back was not nessesary i got confused.

 

The cat back isn't necessary because what is most restricting on the 6 isn't the cat, it's everything behind it. If you wanted to get some decent gains then just run bigger piping from the cat and throw better mufflers on it. As for the CAI it's a fat pain in the nuts to put the damn thing on without managing to throw CEL's every 10 seconds. While the gains will clearly be better with a CAI it all depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice, espically since if you still have a warrenty then you'll want to be removing the CAI anytime you have to take it in for something. If you want the ultimate power out of the car then be ready to shell out top $ for parts that won't turn it into a flaming wreckage, cause if you go cheap, you get what you pay for.

D to the B

 

Sorry, buy no.

The biggest restriction is the Cat. You will get little if nothing by putting a new cat-back w/o something like headers. Sounds nicer, though.

Be careful of which intake you get as well. The only intake that corrects the a/f is the CPE intake. Others make your car run WAY lean. I will agree with one thing...You get what you pay for.

Sam

 

Ok so street illegal if you wanted to emphasize restrictions then sure the Cat is one. If you take that off hell yeah you'll get huge gains. As for headers, I was talking small upgrades, it's not like changing out a bulb putting new headers on this car, espically since the engine is packed so damn tight in there. But yes headers would clearly benefit the power departement, and for minor upgrades guess what the Cat is fine on the car and an upgraded "hi flow" cat won't do a damn thing more then the stock will. Sorry I should have specified what I was talking about.

D to the B

 

There are actually two cats on our cars. That is what's killing the performance of a Cat-back upgrade. Headers are a pain with our cars. People who have a shop do it have been charged up to $4-500 just for the labor. It can be done at home with jackstands, but not an easy job by any means. Probably one of the most difficult upgrades out there.

 

forget the cat, cause its not the biggest restriction on the exhaust on the car, its a prt of it though. Increase your pipe size for one thing, get a new cat with an inlet/outlet the same size and the new pipe and new muffler w/ no larger than a 3"-4" tip. you will increase your power by doing that. when getting a new pipe, do NOT use CRUSH BENDS, they cut down on cubic inches within the pipe, use either Mandrel bends or U-Bends which keep the same size of the pipe all the way to the muffler. Also, do not go higher than a 2.75" pipe, the rule of thumb here is, go a quarter inch larger than the standard size. even though we want to reduce back pressure, we still back pressure, we are not running turbos. The stock exhaust pipe runs between 13-16lbs of back pressure, the larger pipe/muffler will reduce that to around to 2-3lbs (see the difference) make sure the Muffler is a straight thru muffler, you should be able to from inlet to outlet w/no obstructions, the pipe inside curves, your not doing anything better by getting it.

If your CEL is coming on by putting on a CAI, you must be doing something wrong. The intake is made to mate up to the manifold and use the stock sensors in the stock intake. that light should not come on just because you are running a CAI

 

The CEL's from the aftermarket CAI's (god too many acronyms) are being caused from the distance not the type of sensor. They displace the sensors stock distance sometimes by up to a full inch or more, which is what causes it to read an improper fuel/air ratio. If you read some of the other posts on the earlier CAI installs some people had to actually cut off a piece from the end of the intake to get the alignment right. You can either take that route or modify the chip to take the added distance into account. As I said earlier if you have the $ to run all these upgrades with bigger pipes, headers, CAI, mufflers and all that crap then I doubt it's a problem for you to correct minor crap like CELs. I think what should be asked is what is the cheapest solution for more HP. All of those upgrades are time and labor intensive. As for the piping, no aftermarket piping, unless you go to a junkyard and request the slackjawed chop shop mech there to bend your pipes with his bare hands use "crush bends". Every aftermarket piece will either have Mandrel or TIG bends.

D to the B

 

Actually, if you buy a piece of straight pipe and go to a shops, alot of shops will do crush bends, because of the cost of mandrel bending machines. and if you dont know what a crush bend is, some people might take instead of paying for higher quality work, if they dont know the difference.