For a long time I have felt that early 350Zs must have had slightly different exhaust hanger positions than later cars (maybe the factory switch in 04?). The reason I thought this was because I have seen more than a few different companies produce exhaust systems that seemed to hang lower on one side than the other on many 350Zs. My own experience with this was with the Injen and Nismo systems on my 2004.5.

Heat cycles and tension will cause cracking, so normally when installing exhaust you start at the front and attach each piece loosely and then tighten it all up so it just hangs there, unstressed.

This last weekend I decided to change my Nismo Y pipe with the Motordyne XYZ and discovered something interesting. When I disconnected the bolts on the output side while leaving the rest of the system in place, a gap formed that was almost an 1” between the Y and the mid pipe. The means that the Y pipe and cats are being pulled on by the rest of the exhaust all the time making the situation ripe for cracks to occur.

My suspicions were then confirmed when I placed the XYZ pipe on top of the Nismo and found that it was in fact longer by about an inch. The XYZ also fit between the cats and mid pipe perfectly.

My Nismo Y is the earlier non-gusseted version, don't know if that makes a difference or not.

This is in not an review of the XYZ pipe, I’ll be starting another thread to give my opinions, both good and bad, on the XYZ pipe (bottom line is the XYZ is good but not as good as I expected from Motordyne).

Anyway, just thought I would throw this out there.

Chris

 

hanger positions are the same on all year cars as far as I know, though the stock hangers are prone to going soft (even softer than they are stock), which can lead to things drifting a bit

I'm swapping over to the NISMO exhaust hangers shortly, as soon as my new pumpkin goes in. Unfortunately they don't do them for all the hangers (1 of the hangers is odly shaped as you know) - but they are considerably stiffer than stock

 

this is a very well known fact on here that the nismo y pipe causes cracking in aftermarket high flow cats and test pipes...many many threads on this
i guess it is good that u have some pics in it though ....i also have the motordyne xyz w/resonator and it was worth every penny, i dont know what u would say bad about it, mine is great but the fitment is very tight....

 

good piks

 

Looks good and interesting review. I have a Nismo and was interested in how much rasp you would get with the XYZ pipe, two resonated test pipes in place of the stock cats and a third resonated test pipe on the XYZ - would be interesting to find out what it sounds like. I may go down that route plus easier for swapping out the test pipe on the XYZ when you do the yearly emission tests.

 

i have berk test pipes (non resonated)+ motordyne xyz w/resonator + nismo mid-pipe (which has a resonator btw) and the nismo tail section and it sounds great...no check engine light either with the defoulers on the test pipes which the berks come with

 

Do you get any rasp?

 

no..i have a vortech too so with n/a im sure there would be none..i had rasp when i just had the nismo y pipe on and once i got the xyz w/ resonator its all good ,...deep and clean and no drone on the highway either...im in the process of getting clips together to post up...im sure if u had resonated test pipes there would be no rasp and a little quieter too...i used to have high flow cats and sounded good too, little quieter than the test pipes...i love my setup no complaints