sileighty21

the shops i called were midas, meineke and car-x. i thought that seemed pretty spendy. could i get the pacesetter, ditch the muffler and get like a magnaflow or other type of muffler? is the piping bad also on the pacesetter or is it just the muffler?

Davard

SInce I have personal experience with this, I figure I should comment.

First, I replaced the stock muffler with a Dynomax Super Turbo (2 1/4"). The car felt stronger, climbing hills in 5th that it hadn't before. Not a big change, but noticeable. Of course, the stock muffler had 175k/12yrs on it. Noise was slightly higher, but most apparent when coasting down hill. Tone was fairly deep. Drove from LA to Seattle with that set-up, and hardly noticed it.

Last September, I finally installed a Pacesetter header, and the car got a lot louder, but still not too bad. The exhaust drones a little until you get over 65-70mph, at which point the sound disappears. But even then, it's still not very loud. My GF (oops! my fiancee) is now driving the car daily, and I can hear her drive up to the house if I'm in the front. But it's no where near as loud as either the old Rod Millen (Liestritz) exhaust or Darryl's Pacesetter/Magnaflow.

From outside the car, it's a little loud at higher RPM, but not annoyingly blatty like some of the ricers.

And compared to the other exhausts, it apparently doesn't lose much HP. Or if it does, it makes it up with torque.

But, back to the subject of autocross set-ups. I agree with Jesse (not to big a surprise ) that if you're going cheap, running stock is the way to go. If you can find a '92-'94 Protege rear bar, that's a cheap stock class upgrade ('90-'91 use 20mm, '92-'94 use 21mm. Apparently, '91-'96 Escort GTs also use a 21mm rear bar as well). But replacing the stock struts with the $160 (for a set of 4!!) ZX-2 struts will make a noticeable difference. The ride will be stiffer, but FAR more controlled, and not too bad.

Many regions offer street tire classes (on the theory that not everyone wants to spend the money for extra rims and race tires). For street tire classes, you can get a set of Falken Azenis, which are cheap tires ($45 or so each) that you run during the season, and then switch to snow tires for the winter. Depending on how many events you run, and what kind of surface, the Azenis should last 1-2 seasons.

UCSBgeek

Sorry to divert off-topic again:

Yeah, the typical "long" drive that this car usually takes is from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, so about 330 miles.

The muffler might be rusted from the inside, as the car was sitting for about two years...you wouldn't believe how much water came out. That would mean doing the upgrade wouldn't be unjustified. Going that route would probably still be cheaper than having the dealer install one....

carguycw

Why bother? You will just wind up with the same thing as a custom bent system for more money. The Pacesetter pipe is not any higher quality than what you'll get from a muffler shop. Re-read my earlier post... you need to call Scruffy's Performance Muffler Shack.

BTW if you're determined to use a chain store, make sure they thoroughly understand what you're doing. Some chain stores have gotten into the "ricer" muffler business with their own overpriced brands of bolt-on cat-back systems. Make sure they are quoting you the price for a simple custom-bent pipe, NOT an entire cat-back system including the muffler.

randallb

My 2 cents - having done a lot of AutoX a few years ago - if you want to be competitive, check the classes and rules before you decide on mods. It may turn out that some silly unimportant mod you decide to do will drop you into another class, where everyone else has extensive (expensive) mods, and you might not be competitive. Some of the other posts mention this, but I suggest you make it a starting point. Or, at least start out in Stock (if allowed), and see what others are doing before making major decisions.


Good luck!

BadAzz92DX

dont even bother... with an intake u aint runnin nething good...
Sileighty?? u got one?? im close, but i need the sr20DET...

sileighty21

i don't have a sileighty, but someday, hopefully. what i really want is a skyline gt-r. that would rule over anything on the road after i got my hands on it.

also, this might be for a different section, but can anyone tell me what to do about oversteer? today on the way home from school i was going about 60 mp/h on an offramp of the freeway and i cornered fine, but then i could feel the back end start to kind of kick out. would i need a rear lower tie bar or better shocks/struts or..??

carguycw

BTW a little oversteer is GOOD. It helps rotate the car coming into tight autox corners and couteracts the inherent tendency of FWD cars to understeer while accelerating. The fact that a Protege WILL oversteer in stock form is one of the reasons they make good autox cars. Many newer inexpensive compact sedans (Civics and Corollas spring to mind) will not break the rear tires loose on dry pavement unless you use the handbrake.

mazdaspeedwest

as for the quality of the Pace system, i can only comment from my own experience. and mine has been good. It's been on for about 4 years and the piping is just fine. looks like crap, but thats normal. It also fit perfect. I just hated the sound, so i swapped mufflers and added a resonator. Fine for racing, but sucks for daily driving. So i swapped mufflers once again to an N1 for a regular ole 3" tip and a silencer, which to my suprise works pretty well...

As for performance, the Magnaflow and N1 showed a better flow than the Pace, but are pretty equal to each other.

The quality of the RMM (leistritz) and the Pace i'd have to say are pretty equal. When i pulled the RMM off when it died, i compared it to the Pace and it looked pretty much identical except for slightly less of a bend over the rear axle. Mind you the RMM muffler sounded much better,

As David said, the addition of a header will noticably boost the sound.

As for autocrossing...as suggested, tune the driver, then tune the car. Although in my case the car was already pretty mod'd. So as i went on, i just replaced with better parts. But don't make the mistakes i made early on, by changing the car for every race...it just creates a new learning curve each time. Learn the car as is, get comforatble with driving at the limits and learn those limits. Once you uderstand how to "drive the course" you'll start to understand how to "drive the car".

sileighty21

good news everyone! i found the scruffy shop you were tellin me to find. they said $50 for just the pipes and about $75 to install. i just went to qwestdex.com, but in exhaust and looked for shops in weird little cities. it worked. thanks to all who helped me with everything on this post.