Frantic few days of car stuff, but in between all of this my new exhaust system arrived. I made a few posts some time ago saying that I wanted to avoid the ‘off the shelf’ options and instead pursue something custom from a local fabricator. As keen eyes might notice, I got a 2bular from Jim instead.
I’ve wanted a new manifold/cat for a while as I’ve had a bit of a rattle and I feel like it has been pegging my car back a little bit on the performance stakes. Charge cooler has raised my ceiling a little bit and hopefully given a reliability margin, but the exhaust is (probably) holding back the ultimate performance. The big concern is the not-OEM cat, my car has clearly collapsed the original cat in the past and looks like it got a pattern part as a replacement, it’s of unknown quality and the SC cars are sort of known for blowing cats away with lots of track use.
My main issue was that after lots of ‘interested’ parties, I couldn’t get anyone to actually follow through on sorting me out. I got tired in the end, had been doing loads of research and just decided that the R&D and dyno time that 2bular has put in over the years was worth the potential downsides - and figured I should make up my own mind about 2bular.
I think it’s fair/reasonable to say that 2bular have a bit of a reputation for lengthy lead times so I’ll address that in the name of neutrality. In short I was promised a system within 7 days (was listed as “In stock” on the website) but it turned out being 3 weeks and it arrived the day before my trackday. In 2bular terms this is practically next day delivery, but still you absolutely cannot rely on getting one in a hurry!
As for the product itself, it looks really good:
The system is actually pretty good value for money. Jim includes all new gaskets, fixings and even a pre-cat lamda sensor - so that’s probably the best part of £100 there straight away. The custom quotes I was discussing were all £2k+ for Manifold/Cat. After researching the market a fair bit, I’m happy to say that I feel Jim’s prices are very fair.
I decided not to fit before the trackday, with only 12 hours to resolve any potential fitment issues I didn’t want to be stressing myself out - plus I sort of want to dyno it before I kick the car in again to see how AFRs are looking. My current system did have a bit of a rattle that I was nervous about though, hence sort of wanting to rush the 2bular in time for Blyton (later turned out to the cone/donut gasket, and it held for long enough so no harm done).
On Sunday morning after Blyton I had an early start, so got to work on wrapping the cat elbow:
I spoke to Jim about heat management beforehand as the OEM manifold heatshields won’t fit, nor the factory elbow shield. Jim explained that some people wrap the lot, some people go ceramic, but many people leave it alone. Clearance to the inside of the clam is significant (and the clam has a heatshielded lining anyway) and the only place that comes dangerously close is the aforementioned elbow. I may revisit this and ceramic coat the manifold, but for now I’ll proceed and monitor with the elbow wrapped.
The manifold and cat would be mated up to the 2bular backbox which I already had on the car, so wasn’t expecting fitment issues. I Did buy some fresh rubbers as the old ones had been strained to force the backbox to fit my old pattern part cat section:
Manifold went on fine, I had to remove the heatshield above the rear engine mount but I revisited this later by modifying it a bit.
The install stalled here for a bit because my backbox slipjoint (female) was marginally too small, just from how it’s been clamped to the slightly undersized OEM cat in the past. I sorted a tool mid week and that was an easy fix (needed to expand it by 1mm at the most).
Everything else fitted up fine, a minor criticism would be that the lambda sensor pre-cat is angled in such a way that clearance to the bootfloor heatshield is very tight, it could have been rotated slightly towards the front of the car where there’s loads of clearance - but it’s not a big deal, and it fits - just 
I dry fitted the backbox and got the usual slipjoint leak, so a few more adjustments and some assembly paste later and it’s now sealed.
The car is still up on stands just sorting some other bits and pieces out, and the weather sucks - so no road testing yet. It sounds pretty good sat in the garage though, obviously the backbox is unchanged and that influences most of the sound but it’s certainly gained some depth to the sound and goes some way towards drowning out the sewing machine effect of the 2zz without being obnoxiously loud!
I modified the engine mount heatshield by chopping off the trailing edge of it, then re-attaching it with some rivets to gain 10mm or so of clearance.
In summary I am happy with the system delivered, it feels well made and fitment is good - many off the shelf “bolt on” systems really do stretch the definition of “bolt on” and require some degree of modification but this pretty idiot proof. I’m also confident that I’ve bought a setup that is well suited to the car and my goals for the car, Jim has gone through many iterations of the 4-1 setup and each one thoroughly tested, I have no doubts that once I sort out an ECU/Map that the gains will be significant. If I’d have gone custom, I’m sure I could have found somebody to match or even beat the workmanship of the welding etc, but any attempt to produce something well matched to the supercharged 2zz in the first attempt would be guess work at best.
I do sympathise for people who have to wait months for a 2bular system, and for those that have issues with quality control etc - but really Jim seems to have the best offering on the UK market, so you need to decide whether or not you can afford the time, effort and testing to get something done custom. I thought I had the patience for that, but I was wrong.
