So I finally decided to change exhausts, after 5 years of owning my true dual Bassani exhaust; I never thought I'd do this, and probably wouldn't have if my piston rings didn't decide to fall apart on me leading me down a spiraling rabbit hole of having the engine rebuilt, and upgrading weak-points in the VQ35 factory design. After having a great experience with Nik & George at SOHO Motorsports with my replacement built short block being assembled, shipped, and on my doorstep within 2 weeks of payment, I wanted to see what else might be up their sleeve. I had heard of their exhaust winning 1st place at Z Nationals earlier, and knew 1 person who had it, but was nervously debating between the Tomei Ti Expreme exhaust, and theirs. Only one word, spelled backwards can describe the performance and sound of this exhaust: RACECAR.

Here's the SOHO Y-pipe, mid-pipe, and muffler laid out on the ground just prior to installation. The Y-pipe is 2.5" with a very clean transition into a Burns-level-of-quality merge collector; after the collector, there is a gradual transition from 2.5" into 3." The mid-pipe and muffler have minimal turns, and bends with no resonator equating to less performance inhibiting restrictions in the exhaust. All of the welds are excellent, and I expect will last the life of the car.

New SOHO exhaust laid out in pieces on the ground:


Here you can see the old tarnished stainless steel Bassani true dual 2.25" into X-pipe with 2.5" out through 2 resonators and 2 mufflers. It was dirty, but 100% functional with no cracks, bends, or damage. It's a good design, but has a few weak-points: the stamped x-pipe isn't optimal, and a few more turns for exhaust gases to make near the mufflers.





Here's how the SOHO single exhaust looks installed! It's well placed, and has no issues rubbing on the W-brace, or potentially scraping on the ground (your frame will hit before any part of this exhaust does). Oh by the way, this exhaust is LIGHT! It weighs 27lbs in it's entirety; that's only 9lbs more than the Tomei Ti Expreme full titanium exhaust, and much lighter than both the stock exhaust and Bassani!




From the side, you can see the muffler isn't obnoxiously over-sized like say Agency Power, is more parallel to the ground, and has great ground clearance (lowered car friendly).



If you have a Top Secret (or Amuse/Shine Auto replica) diffuser, minimal modification is necessary to make it fit with the muffler. This is one of the few single exhausts that doesn't require substantial performance diminishing diffuser modification.





Finally, the back to back dyno comparison between the aftermarket Bassani exhaust system (green) and SOHO Motorsports (red) revealed slight gains in whp/wtq of about 2 to 5 predominantly in the mid-range, and a noticeable improvement in the smoothness of mid-range power output. First is uncorrected smoothing at 0, then SAE corrected smoothing at 5.





It's important to note that this car also has JWT C8 cams, 11:1 compression forged internals, DC headers, Z1 Motorsports 60mm test pipes, 5/16" Motordyne plenum spacer, and JWT pop charger (haha yes, still rocking the "POP" charger)... so it's hard to improve over-all power output without dramatically changing the intake manifold side of the equation. After-all, an engine is just an air pump, and only as strong as it's weakest link (intake-side in this case). Given that the Bassani exhaust system had dyno proven gains of about 11whp/10wtq on my old untuned factory VQ35DE engine, and that the SOHO single exhaust showed slight gains over-all on top of that, it can be surmised that the SOHO exhaust is one of the best systems you can install on a naturally aspirated 350z. It's highly doubtful that the greater expense of some the other high quality exhausts (Motordyne, Tomei, etc) will be justifiable with any better results on a naturally aspirated engine. Also, this car was previously dyno tuned at Z1 Motorsports at 289whp/269wtq (dyno measurements vary place to place); the only change was RC440 injectors and a re-tune prior to recording the best Bassani exhaust run, and followed up immediately by an exhaust change, and then the SOHO exhaust run. Tune parameters weren't changed between the Bassani exhaust and SOHO exhaust.

Having 7,000 miles on the previous setup, the most note-able change is drive-ability and throttle response. Low and mid-range drive-ability seems smoother on the Mk1Mod1 butt dyno, and throttle response is slightly smoother.

Here's some before/after videos of the dyno's and drive-by's:

Bassani Dyno:

SOHO Dyno (much louder, camera microphone is cutting out some):

Bassani drive-by after dyno:

SOHO drive-by after dyno (it got dark because the old exhaust was a PITA to remove after 5 years of weather and abuse):

I highly recommend this exhaust for anyone looking for something truly high quality, and wants that true racecar sound that the VQ is capable of making. If you have more specific questions, you can find the owners info at www.sohoturbo.com. They are great guys with a passion for what they do, and will surely answer any other questions you may have! I'll try to get a better video driving past a camera or something soon.

 

I really enjoy the sound of this exhaust. I heard it at ZDAYZ last year and for all the drama SOHO and I have had in the past on here, they were a good group of guys.

 

very good review. Nice write up.

 

Well done write up&video/pics!
Both systems sound good.
I can understand that after awhile,a Z owner just wants
something different in an exhaust.I'm not a single exhaust fan
only for the looks on the car.Performance and sound is another matter.
Your SOHO really gives a racecar sound.The quality looks great.
Depending on your driving situation,it may work for you.
A bit too loud for me for my everyday driving and extended hwy miles.

 

Congrats on being happy. Imo doesn't sound that good. I always contemplated switching out my MD set up but vids like this make me change my mind. My car sounds to clean. Not all loud look at me rasp. Hopefully they gave you a HUGE discount bc their exhaust is way overpriced just to be a gimmick of few different exhaust ie motordyne xyz

 

To each their own, it's definitely not for the timid. It has much more of a racecar sound and volume level to it than most exhausts. Resonated test pipes would tone it down slightly, but I prefer the raw engine sound. It's definitely not a gimmick or replica of Motordyne's XYZ though. The XYZ is less expensive because it's produced on a much larger scale, and they really aren't even remotely identical in shape, collector design, or weld quality:

XYZ Pipe:

(Only pic of Motordyne merge collector I found off a 370z was uninspiring)


SOHO Y-pipe:



As far as low production exhausts go, I think it's a pretty good deal (cheaper than a full Motordyne exhaust by far), and you can't even argue Motordyne is a better design unless you do back to back dynos. Even if you did back to back dynos, it's very unlikely that any non-custom exhaust is going to add more than 15whp to a mild NA VQ build. I considered Tomei Ti Expreme & Motordyne, and price vs performance potential was a deciding factor in SOHOs favor.

 

glad you like it brotha! sounds way better than the old setup IMO. so many haters on the site tho.. people can't even be happy for someone and always have something negative to say about everything. the sound is alot better than i had anticipated

 

Nice write-up. Good sounding exhaust. Just think they're a good bit high on the prices. Shouldn't be the same price (maybe more?) than the Tomei. Had it been a few hundred cheaper, I'd have probably picked one up in place of my Agency Power.

 

Very nice , I would love to see how much your car wakes up with a different intake manifold, bigger TB and larger MAF. It will be very close to what I'm building.

 

dang, thats a built 11:1 big cam NA motor dyno? yikes.... should be the poster child on why not to spend money on a NA build. ORa reyou putting a turbo/ supercharger on top of that?

 

Nice pick up. I had the Bassani set up too and then I won the SOHO exhaust at Zdayz. I love the sound. But highway drone is pretty bad. Nik and George are great guys to deal with too.

 

Some reason I can't see pics but since your na and u went with 3" piping did you feel like you lost little torque?
I know when I used to have Greddy evo2 exhaust it was 3" and I felt the loss.

 

^ Single 3" is different than dual 3".... I swear 3" singles make the best power on these cars for NA

 

You have to realize I have a JWT pop charger, stock throttle body, and only a 5/16" spacer on the OEM intake plenum. The engine is gasping for air, but can't suck it in because of this. There are 3 possible paths at this point:

A) 310whp: 3 to 3.5 inch intake + 87mm throttle body + aftermarket plenum ($2-3k)
B) 340whp: ITBs ($5-6k)
C) 550whp: Vortech supercharger + water/meth injection ($5-6k)

No power lost, back to back dyno shows that. Slight mid-range improvement in power. Previous exhaust had dual 2.25 before x-pipe, and 2.5" from the x-pipe onward. This exhaust has a 2.5" y-pipe, and single 3" after the merge.

2.5" Y-pipe = (3.14 * 1.25^2) * 2 = 9.8125
Single 3" diameter = 3.14 * 1.5^2 = 7.065
...exhaust gas velocity goes up at the merge point (increasing scavenging effect), pressure goes down.

2.25" X-pipe = (3.14 *1.125^2) * 2 = 8.81125
Dual 2.5" diameter = (3.14 * 1.25^2) * 2 = 9.8125
...exhaust gas velocity goes down at the merge point (decreasing scavenging effect), pressure goes up.

I'm sure there's some more scientific people out there that can better explain all this stuff. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here. I'm really a novice with the all the Bernoulli's wizard magic stuff

 

James, you are correct the two pipes that are coming off of the manifold are in a state of higher pressure, thus low velocity is seen in these pipes once the pipes come together at the merger and into the larger diameter pipe, they are able to enter a state of low pressure and high velocity. Thus this low state of pressure that the exhaust gases are entering allows the scavenging effect to take place and thus create a vacuum effect and help the exhaust gases exit the engine faster.

 

Are they making an exhaust with dual tips like the v1 motordyne? Im not a fan of the can look

 

Our Dual exit catback exhaust looks like this...

 

This exhaust is growing on me. If my car doesn't sound even better with my vortech I'll get one of these if I can get it for 550 or less