So after waiting nearly a year (lol) my genuine HPC coated RPW Race Headers turned up yesterday. There are some pics on this page (http://www.wermspowke.net/headers.html) for anyone who's interested. I hope to get them fitted next week and I'll be doing a before and after dyno for comparissons sake.

Anyone who wants to reply and tell me what a fool I am for not buying Pacemakers and wasting money on over-priced rubbish from the Forbidden Company can apply elsewhere :P :P

Update: Installation booked in for Monday. I'll hopefully get both dynos run the same day too, and maybe even a third with the T/B installed, funds permitting.

how much? if u don't mind.. or no pm me

or tell me to *** off.. lol

cthulhu lights a fuse and runs!! :uzi: :bouncin:


Edit: They look smart though!

So after waiting nearly a year (lol) my genuine HPC coated RPW Race Headers turned up yesterday. There are some pics on this page (http://www.wermspowke.net/headers.html) for anyone who's interested. I hope to get them fitted next week and I'll be doing a before and after dyno for comparissons sake.

Anyone who wants to reply and tell me what a fool I am for not buying Pacemakers and wasting money on over-priced rubbish from the Forbidden Company can apply elsewhere :P :Plooks sexy! Theyll look good in the engine bay.

*insert pacemaker line here*

To add something a little more useful..

Here is a few comparison pics..

http://members.optusnet.com.au/miltonf/car/pacemakers/pacemaker.htm

Choonga: They are about $650 - $800 from memory

The headers themselves fetch $660. HPC coating is pretty expensive at around $145 per header (I didn't get the flex pipe coated). Do the maths and it comes out around $1000 :shock: with freight to Darwin which is a tiny bit more expensive than the Pacemakers. (This is where you all fall about laughing :redface: ).

But I'm happy :D After I get them fitted and dynoed I'll let you know if I stay happy. I've pulled 124kW ATW before but I'll get another pre-mod run done anyway.

The headers themselves fetch $660. HPC coating is pretty expensive at around $145 per header (I didn't get the flex pipe coated). Do the maths and it comes out around $1000 :shock: with freight to Darwin which is a tiny bit more expensive than the Pacemakers. (This is where you all fall about laughing :redface: ).

But I'm happy :D After I get them fitted and dynoed I'll let you know if I stay happy. I've pulled 124kW ATW before but I'll get another pre-mod run done anyway.
Im not gonna laugh, cause i know RPW's pricing scheme :)

Good luck with em.. Hope you get a good amount of kw's out of em to make it worth the cost :)

What do u know about RPW's pricing scheme??? Cause all I know is that its pretty rich!! Ive got a fair bit of stuff off RPW and never had a problem with the qualtiy or advice, however my wallet starts to shudder ever time dave rings me.......

Nice one, Cthulhu. :D

The quality of manufacture looks better than the pace maker ones. :cool:

I gave up waiting after 6 months and got my money back. :)

Hey bain how much did your pacemakers cost. I've got wildcats ( not tuned length and gives it one hell of a different sound compared to other big magna systems{just ask the NSW crew}) But they do scrape a little not much. I was thinking of maybe getting a set and seeing hearing and feeling the difference. Will get dyno as is then after if i decide to get them. Still have my Greddy sitting all alone waiting to go in too :cry:

Hi All,

Talking to the Forbidden Co. and was told that the pipe lengths for the AWD race headers are actually markedly different lengths :nuts:

Sure it's an improvement, but for $660 I'm commissioning a local shop to build some custom units. I will endeavour to post the tube lenghts, bore, collector profile etc when we're done. Probably in the new year. My newborn is sucking all the doshka at present!! :P

Getting my 2.5" from cat back, 16" hotdog, Lukey LR2779 and Holden GenIII tip for $400 in a fortnight. Leaving a flange near the transax so I can expand to a twin system when the cash is good!! Will look **** hot!

Here is a few comparison pics..

The Peacemakers look like three pipes weled together at teh ends in comparison to the tuned length "look" of the RPW ones. I said "look" because it is hard to tell from the photos.

Looking down the throat of the RPW ones shows a few drag elements in the welding of the flange to teh pipework. In the one area where free flow is vital I am suprised to see that it isn't honed there.

The pipe sizes seem different as well.

Hmm.. still leaning at getting RPW in by Christmas.

Hey bain how much did your pacemakers cost.
$386 :)

Looking down the throat of the RPW ones shows a few drag elements in the welding of the flange to teh pipework. In the one area where free flow is vital I am suprised to see that it isn't honed there.

You lose a bit of detail by not getting any depth from a photo. There are no dags or anything at that point, but there is maybe a 1mm lip around some parts of the pipe. I wonder how much it is exagerated by the ceramic coating.. without the coating you might not even notice it.



The pipe sizes seem different as well.


With the RPW ones or the Pacmakers? The RPW pipe are all the same diameter and length. The RPW ones are 1 5/8" vs 1 1/2" diameter in the Pacemakers though if that's what you mean.



Hmm.. still leaning at getting RPW in by Christmas.

I hope to have the dyno results up next week after fitting, so you can see then whether they are worth the extra dough.

Whilst I haven't seen them in the metal, they look better than I thought. I feel the Pacemaker's look better where the three pipes are next to each other but there's not much in it. I can't compare the length of merge pipes properly but I think they look similarish. Shall be interesting to see what shape the graphs look like before and afterwards. The RPW ones are slightly larger which will aid higher rpm but I'm worried they might be a little large for the 3.0. I reckon there's a small chance of loosing low rpm torque until the 3000 mark. Guess we'll see.

Where do the oxy sensors go in these two different sets? What about provision for EGR?

I gave up waiting after 6 months and got my money back. :)

geez, you were lucky........

On the subject of extractors, has any1 heard of a company that make them for magnas "apparently" called Manta?

Just curious as I have a mate that says he can get hold of a set for $450 :confused:

Updates in first post. Installation is booked in!

My TH was the test install by Dave, last Thursday (18th Nov). 3.5L

He replaced my RPW street design extractors. Have not been dyno'd, but SUBJECTIVELY car now feels even stronger. Over the weekend was towing (a car has to work too!) a laden 6x4 garden trailer, accelerating smoothly in 5th (manual) from under 1400 rpm.

Most impressive. Stand at the back of the car, and you can hear the individual pulses at idle. Closest thing to a V8 burble! Oh, having a 3" exhaust with high-flow everything probably helps maximise the benefits of the race design extractors.

If you are considering extractors from RPW, go the race design - cost only a little more. :D

Stand at the back of the car, and you can hear the individual pulses at idle. Closest thing to a V8 burble! Oh, having a 3" exhaust with high-flow everything probably helps maximise the benefits of the race design extractors.

Hey have you got stainless or mild steel 3" ????
I've got a 3.0L with a 3" stainless high flow cat, res, 3ARacing muffler, all mandrel bend and this thing has an awsome sound. Ooh wildcat headers which are not tuned length. The rear bank comes straight down and joins up with front set. As most are similar headers the rear is same as front. This gives the three litre a very different sound pulses thru

Running update time...

Dropped the car off to get the headers fitted this morning. I went and got a dyno run done first though to give me a baseline for comparisson. It highlighted an important point about using dyno figures for anything other than tuning or comparisson purposes.

The last time I put my car on this dyno, nearly 12 months ago, I pulled a respectable, but probably optimistic, 124.3kW at the front treads. This morning when I put it on it only registered 112.5kW, on the same dyno! :redface: so either my car has lost a hell of a lot of power in the last few months :doubt:, or conditions (fuel, tyres, temperature, humidity, etc) were sufficiently different between the two runs to really skew the results.

Important thing is the dyno this afternoon :D

Agree with the above. The only time I got my car dyno'd they did three separate runs and the figures from the first to the third run were about 8kW different (it went up a bit each time). It can be a bit of a trap also - eg. if I'd put in a panel filter (for argument's sake) after the first run, I would have seen a tidy increase in power on the second and third runs and been very impressed with myself. But in reality it's just the vagaries of the dyno process. So comparing different vehicle's performance between different dynos is INCREDIBLY subjective - and even between runs on the same dyno on the same day!

Running update time...

Dropped the car off to get the headers fitted this morning. I went and got a dyno run done first though to give me a baseline for comparisson. It highlighted an important point about using dyno figures for anything other than tuning or comparisson purposes.

The last time I put my car on this dyno, nearly 12 months ago, I pulled a respectable, but probably optimistic, 124.3kW at the front treads. This morning when I put it on it only registered 112.5kW, on the same dyno! :redface: so either my car has lost a hell of a lot of power in the last few months :doubt:, or conditions (fuel, tyres, temperature, humidity, etc) were sufficiently different between the two runs to really skew the results.

Important thing is the dyno this afternoon :D


having old engine oil, a semi clogged up air intake, when was the last time u changed your tranny oil? ;)

these *could* of lost that 10kw your trying to explain... :cool:

Well, it is due for an oil change next month... ;)

So nothing is ever straight forward, is it?

Picked up the car around 15:45 today and drove off to the dyno, about 10 minutes away. Didn't get a chance to put the boot in because of very tight traffic :(

Put the car on the dyno and it pulled pretty much the same numbers! grr! Oh well, shrugged it off. I do still have the stock sports muffler and it was even hotter than when I did the first dyno run. :confused:

Got back on the road and put the boot in for the first time to see if there was any 'seat of the pants' (SOTP) dyno improvements and heard this really loud buzzing type noise, like someone had stuck a lawn mower under the bonet with my normal engine. :rant:

Took it back to the exhaust place and it turns out the supplied gaskets were rubbish and the fiberous material on the outside of the gasket had just burnt off (fibre/metal/fibre.. was replaced with metal/fibre/metal). So they fixed that up for me free of charge and I went on my way. No idea how much, if any, impact the busted gaskets would have had on power production but I had no time to do another dyno run anyway. Oh well.

BTW, SOTP dyno says it's got more poke, but no quantifiable gains at this stage. Oh well. I'll dyno again after fitting the 'high flow' throttle body. See what happens then!

No buzzing from the flex pipe? Any other fitment issues or pipes running close to steering or aircon hardware? Hey, did it affect the exhaust note?

Had my pacemakers installed 2 weeks ago.

Had 2'5 cat-back exh to lukey al4-5990
diy high flow tb

Put them on, first day autobox/ecu were learning like a dog and were crap driving conditions for a good 50km's. Later in having them my baby starts climbing from 80-150 in 4th with small accel on pedal, autobox has different driving characteristics, feel like you can do more with the same amount of instruments to control the car with.

All in all, they were worth every cent and more.

No buzzing from the flex pipe? Any other fitment issues or pipes running close to steering or aircon hardware? Hey, did it affect the exhaust note?

No buzzing from the flex pipe. Once the gasket problem was fixed up I was left with just the roar of the engine :badgrin:

I had a chat to the guy who did the fitting and he was impressed with how neatly everything fitted up, and he didn't mention any issues. Now that I have my digital camera back I'll snap a few pics in the engine bay so you can check out clearances.

Exhaust note improvement was nice. At idle the car used to be barely audible (stock sports muffler is very quiet). Now it's got a subtle deep burble sound. As meansolara once said you can actually hear the individual pulses. With a muffler change and a biger bore exhaust it would sound very mean I think.

Nice. See how it feels on a cooler night etc. Hey, can you get a better side photo of the point at which the primary pipes merge?

With a muffler change and a biger bore exhaust it would sound very mean I think.
Mate as soon as i get some sound of my exhaust i'll post it on here and then you'll hear a nice tone. ( 3' mandrel bend marine grade stainless/ high flow cat, res and 3ARacing muffler/ wildcat headers) Just ask the NSW Sydney members they've heard it especially in the tunnels.