Street Build Manny The Mistake: A Lesson In The Dangers Of Nostalgia

While checking out the exhaust situation I noticed that the left rear half shaft inner CV boot was leaking. After confirmation that my local axle shop can have it rebuilt this week I pulled it today.

I pulled it out through the knuckle opening. It probably would have been easier to pull it through just enough to clear the differential then slide it back out, but whatever. It is done now. It's a REALLY good thing that I replaced this whole hub last year because it came apart very easily. Also I pulled off way more than I needed to. Ignore the disconnected trailing (?) arm.

Missing the CV boot clamp. Surprisingly there is still grease inside in spite of how much clearly leaked onto the differential and subframe.

But this is no bueno. The c clip is completely missing, and the shaft has slipped out of the differential at some point in the past and damaged the threads as a result. God, the previous owner of this car was a real piece of shit.

This all needs to be back together because I've got help coming this weekend to install the sway bars with me.

In unrelated news, I am rebuilding my first turbo! This was the celebratory picture when I finally got the turbine housing off. It's a 60hp turbo from my van and it's so tiny! Unfortunately that only makes it more difficult to rebuild. I bought the ONLY RHB3 rebuild kit in the entirety of the US according to GPopShop. And I accidentally destroyed one of the components so they're drop shipping me a ~10mm "piston ring" from the manufacturer today. I'm bad at this.


EDIT: Also, STM STILL hasn't responded to my email or answered the phone.

 

When you're paying someone to rebuild things for you, you're not paying for the parts or their time but all of their expertise. And it's a good thing that I sent it in to be rebuilt because they just got back to me telling me that the inner axle cup and tripod don't match. It can be rebuilt and it will handle the power but there will (continue to) be a bunch of play and I'm likely to get vibration and noise from it. I don't know which part is incorrect or if the other side is the same, but now I get to keep an eye out for LSD rear axles. Cool.

EDIT: After 30 seconds of researching, it looks like I might have non-LSD axles with LSD inner cups, hence them not matching. And also possibly explaining why the boot clamp is missing in the first place. What I don't know is why (allegedly LSD was standard on 98+ Eclipses) or if the passenger side is also using a non-LSD axle.

 

I had a huge long post typed out but yet again, the cat closed the tab before I finished.

This smug asshole. He's so smug.

 

A lot has happened this week. The axle came back from the shop. It is confirmed to be a non-LSD axle with an LSD inner cup. It has a fair amount of play, but it works. For now. I will, in the future, either buy a set of used non-LSD axles or buy a set of these (https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=5468055) and then toss in an EVO clutched LSD.

I ordered the STM catback Sunday. It arrived Thursday. I will post a review of it once I get some videos of it. Until then, I'll start with the pictures.

This thing is beautiful. The quality is absolutely amazing. I can't believe that this went for only $500 two years ago. I went with the catback option because I already have a decent 3" downpipe, and I had a cat welded into said downpipe less than two years ago. Of course, I installed this same day.

I probably don't need to add a description to this picture, but I will anyway. At least part of this started off life as a 2g catback, but it has been cut up and rewelded so many times since then that I have no idea what it was. And it is heavy! It has to weigh at least 35 lbs. It is a lot heavier than the OEM GSX catback that I have laying around my garage. It used all of the factory hangers and it needed to, because it stretched that rubber a lot under its weight.

Here are some close ups of the spots of interest on the old catback, starting at the cat flange and moving rearward.

If it looks like a perforation, it is. Some of this is corrosion. A lot of this is an incompetent welder burning through the mild steel. At least now I know why it was so loud and sounded so bad. Also!

This is the inside of my catalytic converter. It is just under two years old and has less than 1000 miles on it.....and it's gone. So, another reason why it was so loud and sounded so bad. Now I get to decide if I want to have another cat welded to my current downpipe or if I want to buy the STM downpipe, have a cat welded into that removable test pipe, and risk the fitment with my current O2 housing, which is a common complaint with that downpipe.

But anyway, I got the catback installed without further issue and went on a quick test drive. People claim that catbacks will "mellow out" as they break in, but here are my initial impressions.

Aesthetics: this review doesn't get off to a good start. The tip looks dumb. I'm very glad that it's not bigger, but it looks really out of place in the wide, rectangular factory cutout. It needs to be maybe a half inch bigger or, preferably, a dual tip. I spoke to STM before ordering about making a dual tip version for me. They said they absolutely could but it would be at least 8 weeks before they could take on any new projects. Since I needed the old catback off ASAP, I made do with the single tip. For now. I'm shopping for dual offset rolled tips to fix this.


Sound quality: I'm very impressed. My car went from sounding like a pathetic SOHC Honda to half of a V8, if that makes sense. The few videos online that exist of this catback capture the quality of the sound well enough, but it does sound a little better in person. On startup it has a certain quality that's almost to a growl, and at WOT it has a nice deep scream. The sound of this car is no longer embarrassing!

Volume: It's bad. Like, really bad. This is by far the worst part of this exhaust. On cold start, this unit is exactly as loud as the swiss cheese abomination dump-after-the-cat that I took off. It does quiet down as the engine warms up and the revs get more stable, but at that point I've already woken the entire block. Cruising around town it's ever so slightly quieter than the previous unit but I still get just as many angry stares from pedestrians angry about the ridiculous noise coming from my car. Under load and WOT this exhaust is WAY louder than the old unit to the point that it's unbearable. The sound quality can be amazing all it wants but if I can't handle how loud it is, I'm still just as unhappy with it. This car is a DD and the volume of this exhaust without a cat is absolutely unacceptable to the point where I don't consider it an overall improvement over the pile of rust and holes that it replaced.

Performance: Wow. The old exhaust was a straight through setup with holes everywhere and yet there is a significant torque jump with the STM catback. Off-boost torque is FINALLY what I remember from my three previous DSMs. I guess this somehow explains why a 9:1 compression build didn't improve things. Somehow, it was the exhaust. The 16g still hits 500RPM later than it did on my Spyder and Talon, but at least now it hits just as hard and keeps pulling. I've already confirmed that there wasn't anything clogging the old exhaust, but it really does feel like I just removed a massive exhaust restriction and the engine/turbo can finally breathe properly. Note to self to confirm that the boost controller is still set at 21 psi. I'm no longer looking forward to imminently upgrading the turbo to 68HTA spec, although that will happen eventually.

The top priority at this point is to get a cat installed. If it's still too loud I guess I'll start installing mufflers and/or resonators into the catback as necessary, which would be really disappointing since I haven't found any competent welders in Indy yet. I just keep finding places to which I will not return, and I really don't want to mess up the excellent build quality of this unit. Also, as previously mentioned, it really is time to have this tune touched by a professional. I have taken it as far as I can.