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OK all you Mugen fans, I need your opinions. Received my Mugen exhaust and headers from the group buy and installed the exhaust yesterday. I'm very pleased with the exhaust - great improvement in sound and looks, and it weighs a lot less. My question is, should I install the headers? What is to be gained from a performance, weight standpoint? Other than bragging rights, at this point, I see no advantage in them. Their design appears very similar to stock. Is it worth the effort or should I sell them and invest in some other performance item? I should mention that in the future (6-8 months) I may turbocharge or supercharge the car. What do you think?
The design is really not at all similar to the stock header; the Mugen has equal-length runners. It's known to provide the most overall gain throughout the rev range, though peak HP may drop very slightly. It will complement a supercharger well, but obviously if you go turbo then you can't use it.
Put it in!! Anything Mugen is a jewel. Maybe you can't dyno the car a brag about achieving incredible Peak Hp numbers but Mugen products still increase the performance of your ride. The overall quality of the product is 1st class aswell. IMO all mugen parts are worthy of framing and putting out on display. WHich is exactly what they did in their Mugen showroom in Japan when I was there 3 years ago.
As John stated, the Mugen header has very specific benefits and tradeoffs. Any header that retains the stock catalytic converter in the stock location is going to give you gains in one area and losses in another. The Mugen chooses to provide benefits from 3000 to 7000 rpm. From 7k-8k, its about the same as the stock header, and then it loses a little after.
By comparison, the Spoon header provides more benefit from 7000 rpm up to the limiter, but it has a nasty dip just before 7000 rpm and doesn't provide the midrange that Mugen does. What do you want most? Corner exit at 6000 rpm the Mugen will help. Blasting down the back straight and
Both headers benefit from tuning, either with the respective companies' ECU, or with a VAFC as they create some rich and lean spots that don't exist with the stock header. Oh, and use the heatshield if you install the Mugen header. It makes a difference in keeping underhood temps down, especially at low speeds.
Thanks for all the comments. I'll probably install the headers after all. Probably next weekend. Guess if I decide to turbocharge, I can always sell the headers as used and still get a reasonable price.
Notice that the COMBINATION of header and exhaust in the S2000 not only increases horsepower in the midrange, it also tunes-out the dip in the torque curve where VTEC switches over.
before is Comptech SC w/4.375 pulley, proflow TB, stock header, stock exhaust
after has mugen header and supersprint exhaust.
both runs were at the same place, same tech on a mustang dyno, weather was about the same, i.e. cold day in wintertime, do not have exact temps. running 93 octane pump gas.
for my MY00 it does not appear that the H/E combo had a great, positive change. below 7000, the stock package had better HP/Tq, above 7300 the latest run was a little higher. i think this was due more to adjustment made on the VAFC since the last dyno run, when Pete noticed that + values with SC = boost visible to ECU. i had been set at +2 and noticed stumbling above 8500, where previous dyno had showed flattening out early. i had dropped it back to -1 and it felt better, and this dyno pull showed about 5hp higher at the peak. for NA cars (as shown in above Mugen provided graph) their H/E combo was consistently higher.
as a test, we dropped the exhaust after the cat and did another run, it was fractionally better throughout, with a peak gain of 5 hp, so i do not think that the SS exhaust is overly restrictive, and even if the mugen exhaust had 0 loss, i would not have gotten the percentage gain claimed for NA cars. i do not think that any exhaust has the ability to get more HP, so having a mugen exhaust should not make too much difference in my case.
end result is numbers are close enough to fall into the range of errors between pulls, gas from a different place, temperature affecting timing, etc, that i will have to decide if it is worth the effort to put H/E back to stock and try to sell mugen and SS to someone who is NA, plans on staying that way, or keep them on and spend more time/money on the dyno to see if i can squeeze some more out of them. after all, i could use the money from the H/E to finally get some gauges....
MUGEN hEADERS
