A good condition 2g or Evo3 exhaust manifold will work for about 90% of people on tuners. The FP manifold is pretty much end all be all for stock frame bolt on turbos.

Can't go wrong with the FP manifold.

Yes a used evo one or 2g cheap less than 90 used.

Go to the junkyard, and you could get lucky and grab a 2g for around 20-30$

Thanks for the suggestions, forgive me for sounding stupid, but I am not familiar with an "FP manifold"

Nevermind, I found one at STM, thanks alot everbody!

You can buy a dorman replacement 2g manifold from rockauto.com for 93 bucks with a 5 year warranty.

bryanwheat said:

You can buy a dorman replacement 2g manifold from rockauto.com for 93 bucks with a 5 year warranty.

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Does anyone have experience with these manifolds?

Are they a factory copy or a proprietary design?

FP has sales fairly often on their manifold and for 175 dollars you can't beat it

Yea wait for the overstock sale or just call fp themselves 175 cant be beat

Forced performance is the FP manifold they are talking about. Best bang for your buck right there.

Myself and a friend made ~500whp on stock 2g manifolds.

Otherwise like others have mentioned, FP's site last I checked had their manifolds for $175 - they're really good.

2g mani. With some work its about as good as an fp. Just some porting and cleaning up. Benefits: Stock, cheap, and stock heat shields can really help with the sleeper look.
Cons: Not as pretty as an FP. Using a die grinder sucks and you'll be doing plenty of that if you want that extra flow out of it.
I think most would agree with those statements. Agreed the FP vs STOCK 2g, the FP is better. Ported and smoothed out here and there and they're neck n neck.

Quick edit: If you dont have a die grinder or the $25 bits needed to properly and quickly port it and open it up then the FP would probably be a better deal. If you have that and get a 2g mani for 20 bucks tho..... cant beat it
Edit 2: Joethefallen: I used some polishing stones along with a nice carbide bit to do the real work on the turbo side. I honestly think my mani would go 55+lbs/min. It was my 63 ar pte holding me at 52lbs. Still, on e85, thats a lot of power. Most would be very happy with that. And i took no more than maybe 2 hours to hog out the collector and o2 housing. The stock o2 housing you really can take a ton of material off of safely. I am undivided so it meant nothing for me to have the partition on mine. It was razor thin by the time i was done, and probably helped flow a couple extra lbs

It's also largely unnecessary for many members, especially those with a more modest budget, unless you find one for a good deal. It's not to say the manifold is flawed, in fact, it is proven to gain over a stock 2g/Evo 3 manifold.

The fact of the matter is the original poster asked what a good budget manifold was. Dollar for dollar, you can't beat a used 2G/Evo 3 manifold for most members power goals. Not everyone is after +400whp.

Many forget to factor in the fact that the FP manifold doesn't allow the stock heat shield to be utilized. A blanket for the manifold is another $100. Other options would be ceramic coating which can be pricey depending on who does it and how many "stages/coats" are done. Stainless heat shields show up from time to time for it in the classifieds. Either way, you're close to $300+ for a manifold where as a good, uncracked 2g can be had for as little as $30-50 and an Evo 3 closer to $100.

Again, much respect to FP on the manifold design, but for many budget conscious individuals, you can't beat the performance per dollar of a lightly ported used 2g/Evo3 manifold as per the OP's original question.

Brand new evo3 manifolds are $200. Order goes like this 1g <2g <evo3 <fp. Evo3 is not the same as a 2g manifold. Runner size and thicknesses are larger on the evo3 manifold.

I've seen many used Evo 3 manifolds for $100 or less. It wasn't suggested to buy new.

Otherwise yes, the differences are obvious and exactly why I buy them when they come up used in the classifieds. I always figure I'll find a use for them in future projects.

Wasn't assuming anything on anyone just clearing the air of possible confusion.