Well I inspected my exhaust today and it was the flanges that join the dump and down pipes that got scraped and only minorly thankfully, everything looks okay in the engine bay too
Did a bit more testing today, yes a significant improvement is really noticeable. Its definitely better than I remember it ever being as it pulls very hard in 4th and 5th (well harder than I ever remember) I'm glad the boost level did not change still just a smidge over a bar, though I do think I will need the unichip remapping to make sure I don't det(it was set to overfuel even at 1.4 bar before)
After replacing the exhaust parts I had systematically cured 3 exhaust leaks 2 on the header 1 massive one on the flexi join. So I was hoping that one problem may have dissapeared; that is late boost. But alas no, I still only make positive boost at 3200 rpm though it is on full boost at 4200 in every gear as opposed to 4500 beforehand - but as I've said before when I am at full boost I feel pinned again
. So I'm putting the lag down to the h00j fmic
A couple of other niggles, the exhaust manifold was very pporly made, though I won't name names I can say what was wrong with it, none of the runners flanges were straight and had to be skimmed flat. The welds at the edges of the runners were too large next to 3 of the bolt holes and meant 2 had to go without washers and one had to be "adapted". The length of the exhaust runner was too short. So I had to get a mate to make me a special spacer from stainless (painstaking). It also twisted the turbo slightly out of true with its original position, which lead to my next problem... the downpipe flexi joint is now 1mm away from the car body at one point and so sends an immense amount of vibration through the car body. Oh well I will just have to take the down pipe off and machine some of the spare material down arond the flexi joint so as to make the gap bigger.
I don't expect the exhaust header to last forever but still it looks pretty
I'm not sure the power is much over 300hp but I'm happy.
