Sigh...where to start?

Well I picked up some new obx headers off a obx reseller on ebay. I made sure they were the newer and improved "2nd design" before buying. They came in and looked really really good and I was pretty excited to get them on.

Taking off the stock manifolds kinda sucked but I got them off and put the front header on. Everything went on good with the front but tightening all the nuts did suck due to access ad what tools you can actually fit up there. Then I went to go put the rear header/ypipe on and thats were I started running into problems. I couldnt even get it on the head studs. The y pipe seemed to be really pressed up against the front header but I didnt think much of it cause nothing was postioned right yet. I started looking around to see what was holding it up and I noticed it was pressed up against the one shield on the firewall. So I took off that sheild and it moved a bit more but still not enough. Theres another sheild up there that I also took off that looked like it might be in the way and after really messing with the header I finally got it on. I tighented down a couple of the header nuts to get everything were it should go and moved on. Now things really started not looking good. Where the front header meets up with the y pipe/rear header, was off about 3 inches. The flanges wernt even close to being on.





Between the front header being a pain to tighten and the angle of how much the flanges were off I decided to fix this on the car. SO I cut off the front headers little down pipe and go to work. Look at how off that is!



Then I also notice this:



Sweet! The edge of the flange is right up on the block!

So I needed to reuse the flange so I cut and shaved and reused that and ended up using a 2 1/4" 90 degree bend I had form an old exhust to fix the offset issue. All together it was hours of cutting, checking, shaving, checking, etc etc.. to get the pipe to fit right, not fun at all. I welded it all up, bolted it all up, only had time to finish 1/2 of my cat back and hurried up to go to the track before it was too late.

Now my PB so far was a 14.1.
1st run a ran a 14.3, 2nd run a 14.4 both at lower trap speeds.

I also doubted the quality of the flanges from OBX, not being very "true" or straight and sure as poop, I also developed about 3 exhaust leaks during beating on it at the track.


So, anyone else have these problems? Or do I just have really really bad car modding luck?

that sucks my friend... thats why im never getting any ebay crap....

You should have looked at grey99's thread in all motor showing all the problems.

oh man really????? crap!!! I searched around a bit and didnt find much other than like the header comparison thread

The main thing I got from that was that the downpipe was too small so i did fix that before putting them on but it didnt seem to matter



FOr a bit I thought maybe it had something to do with what I did to the downpipe but it just hangs there, nothing to do with the headers and I didnt have the exhaust hooked up to it cause I took it completley off

hmm iam goin to say bad luck i have the obx headers and havent had one problem with them.....i dident have any exhaust leaks or fitment issue it all went well,i mean i did pull the whole engine out when i did mine so there would be room to move but thats about it.

I really wouldnt say its ebay, just obx. I mean they sell greddy catbacks for our cars on ebay and those are perfect. OBX is just a cheap *** company that gets / or has made all of its products from china.

man i bought shorty headers and had to do the same exact thing. what the f*ck is wrong with these companies, do they not test fit this ****?
why can't we get headers that fit and dont cost a thousand bucks?

dam sorry to hear that. Some time you can have luck with ebay and sometimes you dont. Or maybe it was just the product it self

it's the product itself not ebay.

It's disappointing because I thought about picking these up and then saw Grey's thread and said nope!

No what's disappointing is that they are still selling this crap product that doesn't fit instead of making ones that do fit.

OBX will never make headers that fit our cars.

That's rediculous. After reading about it a couple times I'm tempted to just make some myself, long tube/full length ones. It can't be that hard.

Do you guys think it would be a waste of time to contact OBX and complain? I dont even want these anymore. I should have just stuck with the stockers and the cattman Y, I mean this was like 3 nights worth of work for nada.

chillin014: so the shorty ones dont fit either? My other thought was to get those ones and use the cattman Y instead of the one they supply but sounds like thats a no go either huh?

I would complain just to make them aware. Don't expect them to do anything about it though.
The shorties I bought were custom made apparently for some guy on his 350z or some rwd vq35. He told me they'd fit but just like in your situation the flanges weren't lining up with the y pipe. I had to cut the y pipe and shorten it to get it to line up with the headers. it bolts up but I'm almost positive the actual holes are overlapping rather than matching up and flowing freely. I feel like full length headers is the simplest way to go but I don't want to have to take off headers from the actual motor if its in the way for some reason while I'm working on something else.
I only paid about 100 bucks for my headers and was looking for a better replacement but I am seeing nothing that cost a reasonable ammount.

yeah I think more importantly I dont wanrt to see this happen to anyone else. Luckily I was doing this in a shop with a welder, etc.. but for someone trying to get these done in a driveway or something, that would be really bad.

obx has a horrible design if you checked on nycmaximas.org you would see a2 page thread on all of the headers. could have just went with thh ss autochrome ones and had no problem

If you would have read the whole thread youd see that I did read that article. But I never seen anything about fitament issues other than with the older 1st design

why hasnt anyone been buying ssautochrome. look how cheap they are compared to cattman and they have pictures of the **** fitting
http://ssautochrome.com/level.itml/icOid/1433

after looking at their 4th gen headers I think that is what i bought off of ebay from some guy who claimed they were custom made for his 350z. I'm wondering if i get their ypipe if it will match up perfectly. You know what im sayin? Like as a complete unit the y pipe and headers probably fit fine...just that the shorty headers didnt fit with a different brand y-pipe.

ssac is junk just like obx. their design for the maxima is a typical y pipe and shorty headers. that will not make any power over the typical y pipe alone.

but it fits, doesnt it? they show pictures of it fitting on their website.
im talking about for a 3.5..if you wanted to upgrade the exhaust on a 5th or 4th gen with 3.5...
if it fits...its gonna be a gain on the 5th gen right? the restriction is the cats..

the only reason I didnt buy those is cause they are a shorty design, Other than that from what Ive been hearing I should have. I guess I figured the obx's would have more power pontential due to the design of the headers themselves (not their y pipe though)

right i see where your coming from but how much of a difference are we talking about in the different design of the headers? If it comes down to 900 dollars or 300 dollars i'm gonna go for the shorties that produce 5 less horsepower?

do they even make a gain at all over stock? I don't see the point for the shorties.

My 2.5" equal length Y > headers (not including cattman )




OT: I owe you $10.

Wow - you spent your time in he11 - that'a a lotta work you did, trying to salvage something from the OBX headers. Check my thread on what I did:

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=513336


I think they came out pretty well. There was a lot of custom work involved. See the photos..

Your missing my point. I'm asking about the comparison of shorties to the stock headers on the 3.5's.
Its still a really good gain, correct? Even if the design is slightly inferior to longer length headers.
If they fit..I don't see what's wrong with ssautochrome..i