Marks951

Anyone know of a place to get titanium exhaust for the 951. They sell cat-backs for RX7 and TT Supra full Ti for about $870......and I know there aren't many of those cars....so why is our stuff so expensive and not Titanium?

Practically every sport bike made has someone making titanium full systems for it.

NZ951

Because 944 owners are typically bottom feeders and we would rather by a mild steel exhaust that will rust in a few years than spend x times more for titanium.

macnewma

I'm guessing because nobody (aside from yourself) really wants one. I am satisified with a full stainless steel setup. Is weight the primary advantage to titanium? If so, how much lighter would it be? It appears they are about 2x as expensive.

By the way, I am pretty sure there are more RX7s and Supras...out on the road...in running condition...driven by people who are willing to drop coin on mods...mods which are sometimes little more than bling.

Marks951

I am not for for Bling...I just noticed all the little import guys had a lot of choices, so a little shopping found Titanium mufflers for pretty cheap, so I wonder how much more trouble would it be to make a whole system? Titanium is a lot lighter than stainless steel. My bike had stainless exhaust and aluminum mufflers, switching just to Titanium mufflers and different stainless headers dropped 20 lbs. That's a lot on a bike. I figure our car could drop about 20-30 lbs using Ti....compared to stock. Maybe it'd only drop a few pounds more than stainless but still....if it could be done in the same price range as stainless I'd buy Titanium any day.

adrial

Titanium is about 1/3 the weight of steel.

I think its a lack of demand really. Titanium is way more expensive for how much gain? How much does a full 3" SS system weigh?

EDIT:
Sorry, Aluminum is ~1/3 the weight of steel.
Titanium is ~1/2 the weight.

macnewma

Compare these two exhaust sytems for the E46 M3:

https://secure5.nexternal.com/shared...t=products.asp - titanium, $2500, 11lbs

And

https://secure13.nexternal.com/share...t=products.asp , stainless, $1200 and probably 30lbs.

So to drop 20 lbs you would be willing to spend just over 2 times as much?

TRWright

Eisenhaus in Chicago might make you one. One of the owners has a GT3, and he has his titanium valvetronic exhaust on it. When he blew by me on the track, I almost exploded in my pants! Give them a call, but be prepared to spend $$$$$$$. The Eisenhaus valvetronic exhaust for the Porsches, BMWs, and Ferraris will run you about $16,000. A custom application would probably cost more.

http://www.eisenhaus.com/ehprice.php...44&Submit.y=15

fortysixandtwo

The only difference in cost should be the difference in raw materials. I don't think welding titanium is much more difficult than welding stainless (welding guide is at work so don't hold me to that just yet), and the bends in the exhaust are large in relation to the tube diameter so there shouldn't be any problems getting the tubing into the proper shape. The biggest cost factor would be the novelty of it being made out of titanium.

DanaT

Titanium is much more expensive as a material. Welding it is also much more difficult. It is an oxygen sponge. Any oxygen will severely damage Ti when welding. The Ti welding that I do is at less than 25ppm of oygen and moisture.

Why doesn't anyone do it? You don't need a Ti exhaust on a car. I would argue that on a (street) bike you don't really need it either but you save a bigger percentage of the bikes weight. IF weight is THAT big of a concern run a gallon less fuel in your bike.

There are just much more cost effective ways to eliminate weight in a car than Ti exahust. For example: get rid of spare tire, dry cell battery (works for a bike too), fiberglass bumbers instead of steel, carboo body panels, etc.

Ad when you get down to it, saving 30lbs in a 3000lb car is a 1% weight savings. Would you spend the price of a Ti exhaust for a 1% power improvement?

My thoughts (that I need to do to reduce weight on the bike and car) is reduce weight by reducing the body fat on the driver. I can loose 20-30lbs a whole lot cheaper than $1000...

-Dana

luckett

Welding Ti is more difficult than SS. You cannot expose Ti to O2 while welding, so you must displace all ambient air around the weld with an inert gas.

Tomas L

Since I am a welding engineer and work at a company that fabricate things in stainless steel and titanium (indstrial equipment, not exhaust systems) I thought I chime in here.
Titanium is nearly half the weight of stainless steel (4.5 kg/liter vs 8 kg/liter).
The price for titanium grade 2 (unalloyed) is today around 15 times higher than the price for stainless steel (sheet metal and plate, not sure about tubes). Normally the difference is around 10 times but there is a shortage of titanium on the world market today.
Welding titanium is much more complicated to perform than stainless due to the need to completely cover the weld area with shieliding gas (as been pointed out by Dana and Chris). For this reason welding titanium takes in the region of two to four times more time than welding stainless. This is for one off and low series fabrication, serial production of 951 Ti exhaust systems is not very likely.

Tomas

fortysixandtwo

Well..... I stand corrected then. I did not think that GMAW or GTAW was that more expensive to perform on Ti vs. SS. And yes I know that it needs an argon or helium purge gas, I also don't have my hands in the metal commodity market for those two metals. I mostly deal with copper tubing and it's brazing to various other metals.

lart951

HI Dana, nice to see you around. Anyway my weight is 315pnds and my height is 6' 5, if I loose 100pnds would I notice a improvement in performance? (serious question not a joke)

DanaT

Yes. 100lbs typically, in drag racing, is thought to be worth about 1/10 of a second. It doesn't matter if you loose the weight in fuel, driver, or car. The only place where you see even more gain is if you loose the weight in the tires/wheels/rotors because you are not only rotating them forward but also accelerating their angular velocity.

When I was yound and skinny (scwany?) at 5'8" and 135lbs and was racing my GSXR1100 I had an advantage. Now that I am 170 some of it has gone away.

To put weight in perspective, when I was racing a Honda RS125 the bike was 130ish pounds. ALl the bikes in the class were only a few pounds off that. They all made 40ish hp. Again there was maybe a 5-7hp difference from the best to worse. There was one rider there that was around 115lbs. I was the next lightest at 150. He was riding essentially the same bike as me. On the straights he would just pull away. Nothing I could do.

-Dana

Marks951

I know on motorcycles the weight advantage of Ti is much greater...and well worth it in the sport bike world.
I think the cat-backs for the RX7 and Supra may be only Ti mufflers and they probably have stainless end caps riveted to a Ti wrapped muffler made from a sheet of Ti formed and welded (similar to a sport bike muffler).
So probably what we'd end up for our cars would be a stainless system like we can buy now but with a Ti muffler and the weight savings would be minimal...as in about 2 lbs. So a full Ti system would not be cost effective but pretty cool. Although if one was making their own cat-back from stainless they could upgrade to a Ti wrapped muffler for pretty cheap....and not have to worry about polishing it like the stainless ones.

This topic has got quite a few good responses....thanks for all the input.