breathegood

If you count stereo and gauges, lite wallet mod, and pissed off wife mod,I started modding the car almost two months ago.....I don't count those. As of this morning I busted out the sawzall and replaced the factory H-pipe with the FRPP X-pipe. By itself this isn't really all that exciting, but I did this with bigger things in mind. I have the STS twin turbo setup sitting in my basement just waiting for me to get a couple of free days to install it. I figured the x-pipe would promote faster, smootherspooling. In the meantime, I decided that if any of the local FRPP dealers had one in stock, I would go ahead and get the x-pipe. Colorado Mustangs had one, so I went for it.

Construction: Not much to say here. It's a couple of pieces of mandrel bent stainless steel tube welded together. The welds are clean and the whole piece is solid. I expected the hole between the two pipes to be larger. It's about an inch and half tall by two and a half inch longelipse. My only complaint is that while the newclamps appear to be of quality construction, the bolts are not metric, like the rest of the car, so I had to go to the tool bench to get another socket to tighten everything down. Fit and finish is spot on.

Installation: Installing this thing is a snap. The instructions are plain, simple, and well illustrated with color photos. From stepping into the garage to having my hands washed and dried took 68 minutes.This included some time for tool hunting and familiarizing myself withmy GT's undercarriage. With organized tools andfamiliarity with the car, I bet I could do this again in 40 minutes....25 with a lift (of coarse, my car only has ~2800 miles on it, so everything is still clean and un-coroded). Needed tools are a 15mm deep wellsocket, 5/8 socket, and metal cutting tool. Thetool youwant that not everyone has (but definately should) is a reciprocating saw. Cutting the exhaust with anything else would be a two day chore.

Iimpressions: This is purely for the curious. Keep in mind, my car is far from finished, andmy next mod will throw all this out the window anyway. This is the only modification I've made. I'm running stock exhaust manifolds, cats, and mufflers. First off, itREALLY smooths out the exhaust tone. It's not so rumbly....I don't know if I like it or not. I like how smooth it is, but it's lost some of the muscular tone. Cabin noise seems to be reduced, which is a big plus. I don't know if it's actually quieter, or if it justseems that way because it's so smooth (maybe it's lost the "drone" that everyone talks about).SOTP feels ever-so-slightly torqier down low, but normal driving feel is pretty much unchanged......don't expect any extra ponies from this bolt on. I know this goes against the grain for the majority of the Mustang crowd, but if you want to mellow out the sound of your GT, or your wife or neighborswant you to mellow out the sound of your GT, the x-pipe in an otherwise stock exhaustis a good place to start.

I will try to remember to record a sound clip before I get the turbos installed so that it can be added to the official exhaust clips page. Since I'll be driving it this way for at least a week, I can make some observations as to whether or not the so-called improved scavenging effects fuel economy.

brad281

Wish I had some twins in my basement. I'd be planning my turbo install before doing any exhaust mods first.

sycd

Good review. I agree with everything you said. I actually noticed a little bump in power in my everyday driving, but not that much, and I was not expecting more.

I married the FRPP X-pipe with the Borla Stingers, and I really like that combo. Definitely not mellow, and very aggressive sounding. Not quiet at all either, ask my neighbors

breathegood

Those twins have been calling me hard this week. It's been in the mid 50's, mostly calm and sunny, and mightytempting to take a couple days off of work just to work on the car, but I'm trying to be patient. I still have quite a bit of snow on my lawn, and I expect several more snowstorms between now and May, so I have time. The car stays in the garage on snow days.It's useless in the snow now, I can't imagine howbad it would be with the turbos. As for turbo planning.....with STS it's already been done. I just figured I'd rather have all eight cylinders feeding both turbos than essentially one turbo per bank. As smooth as the exhaust tone sounds compaired to the H-pipe, I think the twins are going tospool up real fast.