Hi All,

My 2005 SE 6spd is in the shop for a clutch replacement, but the flywheel's apparently shot, with no replacement available. Other issues include needing a bank 1 precat and the steering rack is leaking. Ouch!

He's leaving the car with the exhaust and transmission pulled until replacement parts arrive. Since he had to wait for a flywheel, he offered to let me shop parts or put in performance parts if I could get them to him quickly and not block his bay. The trick is that anything I source on my own I have to get to him ASAP. I'm salvaging a stock flywheel and a steering rack from car-part (saving much $$), but it looks like the exhaust system is fair game here.

I didn't find a definitive list of bolt-ons, so I'm wondering if there's a FAQ or sticky anywhere, but what I see so far is:

CAI - The car had a CAI on it when I bought it. Don't know the details though.
Headers vs HFPCs - I'm concerned about emissions, so are HFPCs the way to go?
Y-Pipe - What are the different options here? Stick with racingline if I get their HFPCs?
Cat - Looks stock. Is this a restriction if I address the rest?
Mufflers - It looks like the original owner put Stillen mufflers/tips on it.

Anything else I should consider? Are the manifold spacers worth the cost?

Any help appreciated. I pretty much have to hope I can order stuff tomorrow to get them in transit.

 

For those that are interested, here's the list of possible mods that I came up with and what I ended up doing:

Intake:
My car had an Injen CAI when I bought it, but the filter needed replacing. I decided to go the dry non-oil route over the oiled one in the Injen. I chose an AEM 7" filter to replace the Injen 5" one. AEM suggests using their red material "DK" parts over their gray "BF" parts, but IMHO, didn't really explain why. It's implied on the web that the red material is a little less restrictive and that the gray filters a little better. Apexi was the other dry filter I considered. There are several other oiled filters including K&N, Spectre out there.
Besides Injen, AEM had a CAI, and also has a bypass option to avoid taking up water in case the filter gets submerged.
I made no decision about CAI vs SRI vs anything else, since the Injen tubing was already on my car.

Manifold:
I was curious about using a phenolic intake manifold spacer kit, but I didn't want to add more labor to the job, so I didn't pursue it. As fate would have it, they ended up taking the manifold off the car anyway, so I missed my opportunity. It looks like a good value proposition.
VIAS delete + Block Plate looks like an option to consider, but I wasn't aware of it until too late. Stock has a noteable advantage between roughly 2800RPM to around 3800RPM, then this mod makes pretty good gains all the way out. I opted not to do it despite the low cost. I think I'd notice the loss below 3800 more than the gain above since I rarely push the car near redline. It looks inexpensive enough to try later just to see.
SSIM didn't look like a good option for me, since it really only is a benefit at the high end of RPMs, which I rarely see. Anyone that races would consider it and would look at the VIAS delete as well.

Exhaust:
Since 1 pre-cat was going (of course the labor-intensive firewall-side one), I opted to replace both. The shop I wanted to work with didn't want to remove emissions control, so I went with the Racingline HFPCs + y-pipe. Since the cat in the y-pipe wasn't monitored, the shop agreed to install it, and would take my old cat if necessary. The previous owner had installed Stillen mufflers and tips, and they're staying.
Besides the Altima headers, Cattman also offers headers, which I didn't pursue because of emissions, and Cattman also offers a y-pipe, but the site doesn't show the products. There is an option to buy the Cattman y-pipe with a high-flow catalytic converter. So, in the end, you could get HFPCs + a y-pipe with a cat to get a high-flow system and retain full emissions control.
Depending on the sound this setup makes, I may go back and look at some kind of sound-deadening. I'm not looking for a growl to go with the airflow.

I looked very quickly at engine management, but am not pursuing it at this time. I think that since in my case I rarely go WOT, I'll let the ECU "learn" the new setup and live with it's very conservative approach. If the right (inexpensive) system and dyno opportunity comes up, I'd look at a more aggressive setup to make use of the 93 octane that I'm obligated to buy. It would seem that there's definitely room for improvement.

I'm about $1,200 in on parts and shipping for the performance parts, and about $600 for the other replacement parts (clutch + cylinders, salvaged flywheel + steering rack) and shipping (unfortunately, a lot ended up being overnighted). At this point, I'll be killed on labor. I saw my car with the transmission and exhaust pretty much disassembled at the shop today. This is gonna hurt.

Still, compared to 2 pre-cats at shop/dealer prices, I'm probably not so bad off.

 

Let me see the headers from racingline you speak of

 

My mistake. Not Racingline, apparently.
I was looking into the headers that are used on Altimas that bolt on to manual transmission 6th gens.

 

Get the spacers, help with midrange that u seem to drive mostly.

I have racingline HFC when bought my car so I don't know if has any gains.

You can also look into cattman yippee I have one with the cat.

Congrats on 6spd

 

I got my car back from the shop today. At least I think it's my car. It looks the same, and all the same stuff is in the trunk, but it feels totally different on the road.

The Butt-Dyno (TM) says this car is way more responsive to the gas pedal. I'm sure it will change a bit while the ECU's still learning. There's a little more growl (which I wasn't looking for), but I think I can live with it. If I could have justified the price of a lightened flywheel, if it's anything like my experience with the old 4th gen, it would have been laughably good.

This car's combined upgrade was HFPCs + cat-less y-pipes + filthy 5" filter -> clean 7" filter. I'm generally opportunistic to put performance parts on, but if your pre-cat fails, get the HFPCs, period. Even with a y-pipe and an ebay exhaust, it's probably cheaper than 2 dealer-priced OEM precats. If I wasn't in such a rush, I might have gone with a Cattman y-pipe with the RT Cat installed, but the rear cat's not monitored anyway.

Note 1:
Reading about the Injen CAI in the forums, it seemed to get knocked for placing the filter behind the radiator fan, ensuring that it took in hot air. Now that the car's reassembled, I can tell you that the one that's on my car puts the filter behind the driver's foglight. I'm considering adding in a heatshield, maybe like the ones Spectre makes.

Note 2:
Manual transmission owners, do yourself a favor and bypass the clutch release damper. My master-to-slave hose is rubber instead of ss, but the shop fabricated it there easily. If you really want ss, technafit will make one for you if you give them specs.
Granted my clutch was worn bare and I replaced the flywheel, so that's one thing, but I was a victim of the dropping/firm pedal. The feel is completely different now, in a good way. Between the OEM master/slave cylinders and the damper, something doesn't work right. If the failing pedal has happened to you, I suggest replacing the cylinders and deleting the damper system. Exedy makes master/slave cylinders that you can have shipped to your door for less than $40.
Also, hat's off to importrp for the .org price on the Exedy OEM-style clutch!

 

I think that the spacers are in my future. We realized that the spark plugs are probably at end-of-life, even if I haven't seen any symptoms yet. So coil packs and plugs are coming up soon. That seems to be an opportune time to get the spacers in.

The y-pipe decisions already made (racingline, without the cat). I think that this will do it for breathing mods for me. The car seems much more lively in the RPM range that I tend to drive in, in the low-to-mid range.

I don't think I'll go for any lightened flywheel or UDPs either.I was resigned to this car being a "highway cruiser", but after these mods, the rolling accelleration is making me consider handling mods after all. Can't do much about that big turning radius though.