Quote:
Originally Posted by RPiM5
It's not as easy as you think.
First off the metal in the downpipes have to be high enough quality to withstand the extremely high exhaust temperatures coming from the engine. The measurements from the turbo to the sleeve on the exhaust have to be perfect also. The O2 sensor positions also should be in the same exact positions as the stock downpipes. If you've ever seen how the O2 sensors protrude through multiple layers on top of the downpipe, you'd know that this is important.
How do I know this? Because I actually had a local shop in Socal make my downpipes for me custom. With manufacturing, ceramic coating and install, it still cost north of a couple thousand. The downpipes in the F10 M5 are not something that can be easily replicated and thrown in like the downpipes on a Honda civic or something like that. Besides, why would you want a poor quality piece of pipe inside of your $100K car??? If you are looking for cheap mods, then you should stick with CTS-V's, and Corvettes.
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dhirm5 is right in this case. 304 stainless is all the same material. All the bends made out of 304 stainless can be purchased pre-made and it's a common practice for all the companies when exhausts or dp's are being designed. The dp's on our cars are very easily replicated because the bends and design are not complicated, same with the flanges. You use a simple drill, to drill a hole for the o2 bung and you weld the $5 bung. Welds are very important and dependent on the skill of the person, but it doesnt take hours to do. My 304 stainless downpipe with a custom 5 bolt flange and additional outlet for the wastegate dump cost me $350 and it lasted hundreds of dyno runs, even more track runs and street runs and the car was doing 900 whp+ on a Mustang dyno. This was a turbo import running 45 psi on a GT42R turbo and EGT's were much higher than what we are experiencing on the f10s'.
Not to deal with any downtime I just ordered a set of "expensive" downpipes and will have my fabricator guy make copies with the option of a microcat.
I will definitely let you know what the estimate runs, but based on my conversation with him it will be much less than what we pay for.
Not trying to prove a point, but just because our cars are $100k it doesn't mean we have to pay a premium for the same metal and welds.
It's like telling Coca-Cola that they have to pay 5 times more per empty can than Shasta Cola even though they can both hedge the price of aluminum and same exact cans come out.