1G MeganRacing 3" exhaust for 1G AWD

[all black 4G63]

Im in the process of purchasing a complete MeganRacing 3" exhaust for my 1G, but I was just wondering if anyone could assist me in identifying the pieces in the attached photo. It shows 5 pieces.

The down pipe, the resonator, the CAT back pipe and muffler. The pipe in the photo I am confused about is the 5th piece "the one pipe by itself."
Does this look like something that was offered with the Megan Racing 3" kit? such as the true test pipe without resonator?

thank you for any feedback you can provide

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[Ludachris]

Yeah, looks like the 'test' pipe that you'd swap out with the resonator in the event you wanted to run it unobstructed. A lot of times this was an option to swap out the cat.

 

[all black 4G63]

Thanks for the info.
but from the photo it looks to be a different length than the resonator pipe. Does this look right?

 

[Ludachris]

Thanks for the info.
but from the photo it looks to be a different length than the resonator pipe. Does this look right?

Could just be the angle of the photo. If you're looking to buy it, the seller should be able to tell you for sure.

 

[all black 4G63]

so i picked up the exhaust and the resonator pipe that comes with the Megan 3" kit is clearly not long enough to fit in place of the factory CAT. I wonder why Megan manufactured their kits this way?

 

[92AWDHX40]

so i picked up the exhaust and the resonator pipe that comes with the Megan 3" kit is clearly not long enough to fit in place of the factory CAT. I wonder why Megan manufactured their kits this way? Anyones guess,.

 

[Vegas Smith]

so i picked up the exhaust and the resonator pipe that comes with the Megan 3" kit is clearly not long enough to fit in place of the factory CAT. I wonder why Megan manufactured their kits this way?

I'm not saying this is the case, but it's possible that not every part of the exhaust is the original Megan. For example it could be some other brand of downpipe etc and they had to make a custom section to make it work. Many of the different brands had different sizes and lengths of the sections that you'd have to customize to get it to work together.

 

[Ludachris]

I'm not saying this is the case, but it's possible that not every part of the exhaust is the original Megan. For example it could be some other brand of downpipe etc and they had to make a custom section to make it work. Many of the different brands had different sizes and lengths of the sections that you'd have to customize to get it to work together.

Was just going to say this - also, the resonator could also be for a different application - maybe a 2g or a FWD, etc.

 

[all black 4G63]

I see, so the shorter resonators work with FWD and 2G's? I have verified the downpipe is the correct application for 1G AWD.

 

[Ludachris]

I see, so the shorter resonators work with FWD and 2G's? I have verified the downpipe is the correct application for 1G AWD.

That was just an example. Not saying the shorter one will fit a FWD or 2g, just that it might fit a different application. I have no idea what it will fit.

 

[El Cuervo]

From what I'm able to tell, based on the picture and how I remember that my megan exhaust looks like, this is a 1g awd exhaust system , minus the longer test pipe piece. That's an extra piece and not included in the original megan 1g dsm 3 inch exhaust. You'll find out once you get it and install it.

 

[Ludachris]

From what I'm able to tell, based on the picture and how I remember that my megan exhaust looks like, this is a 1g awd exhaust system , minus the longer test pipe piece. That's an extra piece and not included in the original megan 1g dsm 3 inch exhaust. You'll find out once you get it and install it.

That's what I was thinking. Once you hang the downpipe and the cat-back sections, you'll know pretty quickly if it's the test pipe or the resonator that is the odd piece out. Then you can modify it to work if you want to use it, or just get another one that fits.

 

[all black 4G63]

OK just in case someone in the future runs into the same problem trying to figure out what is the correct test pipe length for Megan racing 3" exhaust.

The test pipe should be approximately 16"

 

[We're on Boost]

For my car, this was several years ago, I bought a new Megan downpipe and complete exhaust system, bolted it up to the stock O2 housing on the stock turbo.
The Megan part that was supposed to replace the cat did not fit. It wasn't even a matter of the length. Main problem was the flanges were not parallel to the mating flanges on the parts in front and behind. I had to have a custom test pipe welded up by a good DSM fabricator to put in that position. He corrected for the angular issues. But with that test pipe in there, the system has been ok and I still have it on the car.
It might be that later production corrected this. I have no idea.

 

[AWD-Tony]

I replaced my exhaust system a year or two ago (downpipe back). The Megan test pipe is about 2” short. Can’t remember if the exhaust or Megan test pipe came with an adapter piece that went from 2”-3”. But that is why it’s shorter. I had to cut it off and extend it.

 

[all black 4G63]

I see, interesting looks like there were some issues with their product.
The issue I’m having now is the Megan muffler does not hang low enough to meet the CAT back pipe when using the stock hangers.
Anyone ran into this, I assume I just need to get “low” hanging hangers?

 

[We're on Boost]

I see, interesting looks like there were some issues with their product.
The issue I’m having now is the Megan muffler does not hang low enough to meet the CAT back pipe when using the stock hangers.
Anyone ran into this, I assume I just need to get “low” hanging hangers?

I used the stock hangers.
What I found was that the whole exhaust system without the test pipe fit the hangers pretty well.
So when I took the car to Andre and we had it up in the air looking at it, I said don't try to force the thing together. It's too far off for that. Let the cat back part of the system hang on the hangers where it wants to. And let the downpipe go where it wants to. Then build a test pipe that fits the space in between.
He cut the 3" flanges off of the Megan part that wasn't fitting in there. He didn't cut them off right where they were welded. He cut the pipe about an inch away from the flange. That way he had 2 flanges, each with about 1" of 3" pipe sticking out, to use for the flanged ends on the test pipe that he was going to build. The idea was that he would be welding pipe to pipe, so it wouldn't warp the flanges at all.
So he bolted those 2 cut-off flanges to the rest of the system that was up there, and cut some 3" stainless pipe with just the right angular corrections on each end to fit up there real nice, and welded it together that way.
He did have new rubber hanger parts that he put up there first, but they were not longer or shorter than stock. They were just new, same fit as stock, and he said they were stiffer than stock.
This worked great. The result was a test pipe with very slight zig-zags at each end, probably 3 or 4 degrees off from dead straight. Because of the angular corrections that were needed.
So the only downside of this that I can see is that if I ever wanted to put a cat in there temporarily, there's no cat that would fit right up in there. It would have to have the same mod to make it fit, like what Andre did when he made the test pipe. But I've never needed to put a cat on it since then.

I wrote quite a bit about the install of this system in a thread in 2009, starting with post #35 here:

https://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/angle-on-megan-exhaust.329611/page-2

I bought all my Megan parts new, somewhere around November of 2008.

 

[We're on Boost]

I still have the original pics I took of the Megan parts when they were new, full size. Might help you figure out if your system is the same as mine.
These pics show all of it except the downpipe, and I didn't show these in the 2009 thread.
Ok well I see our new forum software is still downgrading the quality of uploaded photos (fewer pixels and lower jpeg quality) but these are very close to what came out of the camera.

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[all black 4G63]

Thank you for the information. From your photos that is exactly what I have.

The photos below is what I am working with after everything is bolted up. you can see that the CAT back section does not meet the muffler correctly.
Any thoughts based on the photos?

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[We're on Boost]

I think that is similar to what I had before we fixed it.
If you were to detach the rear section (muffler) from the hangers, and bolt it up to the cat back section that we see hanging low there, I think you would have what I showed in the picture in post #39 of that 2009 thread.
In that picture, you can hardly see it because for some reason I made that pic so small, but the muffler was so low that even with zip ties pulling it up towards the rear hanger, it was still pretty scary driving the car the 30 miles to the shop where we went to work on fixing it.
I still have the original of that pic, and I'll post it here, bigger size so you can see the zip tie better. I added steel wire there for the 30 mile drive.

So I think one way for you to go would be to fix it the same way we did, as described up in post #17.
There could be other ways. Maybe another way would be to cut off the aft end of the downpipe and kind of re-aim it.
I don't know if there is room to do it that way though. We thought we did it the best way, with a custom test pipe that has a little zig-zag in it.

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[all black 4G63]

I'm sorry the post #17's photo is not available, but ultimately is this issue is due to the test pipe?

Did you make yours at a different length?

I ask because this set up that I bought came with an 18" test pipe that was custom made, there are no bends in it.
When I originally hung the exhaust I started with the CAT back section first (hung it to the hangers), then I tried to fit the 18" hand made test pipe between the down pipe exit and CAT back and it seemed like it was going to the too long.

 

[all black 4G63]

I'm confused why Megan would make a kit like this for 1G AWD and it not fit?

 

[We're on Boost]

I didn't have any pictures in post #17. I described what we did in words there.
If there is some part of it that doesn't make sense, I could try to describe it different.

It would help if I had a picture of the test pipe we made, but I don't. No measurements either. My car won't be here until May 10. It's at English Racing right now. Might be able to get some kind of picture of it after that.
I think we did make it a little longer in addition to the angular fixes, but I don't remember.

What the problem is due to, well, I don't know. Because the actual problem might be how the down pipe was made and how the catback was made. It's like they weren't aimed at each other correctly. But we saw that the easiest way to fix it was by making a custom test pipe.

As for why Megan did this thing wrong I wondered that too. But they are not, or were not, a real high-end manufacturer. Still there are some good things about it. The metal is a reasonable thickness (not super thin like some stuff is). The first time my car went to English Racing (in 2015) they had planned to build a whole new custom exhaust system for it, but when Lucas looked it over he said it was ok, they wouldn't really need to change it. So we left it on. That gave me $1,000 to spend on something else .

 

[all black 4G63]

I see thank you for the info.

 

[We're on Boost]

I finally got a pretty good picture of the "zig-zag" custom test pipe on my car. Straight didn't work, so we did this, to get the Megan downpipe and the Megan catback put together. You can see that the angles are not much. This has been on my car just like this for about 12 years.

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