Agency Power minus kitty installed - review and gotchas

[greddy91]

Over the weekend I paid a friend who owns a shop to install the AP Downpipes purchased via sizeable discount from eBay.

Gotchas first:

1. Heatshields had to be cut and bent to reinstall based on rear o2 placement.
2. Driver's o2 sensor wires (qty:4) required extending
3. The supplied donut gaskets are far too large - used originals.
4. The secondary pipeing at the bottom (to connect to the stock exhaust) required lock washer use on the top and bottom. OEM piping has welded bolts. This would have been preferred.
5. Top o2 circular shields no longer lined up and were not reinstalled.

Review time:

Holy santa clause shyt!

First the sound. The factory muffler now sounds superb. At idle you can barely tell anything was done. Startup is still ridic loud, but that really isn't a change. When on throttle and underload you can finally hear the turbos at work and the muffler sound is just right in my opinion. It sounds great and while I had previously considered building a custom muffler setup including dumps, I now am likely to just swap tips to some generic blued chrome and not make additional alterations.

Now the performance:. SOTP Dyno results are real. Off idle torque is massive. The lag experienced on the bottom room range is gone. The traction nanny now yells at me if not launching in M mode. Not saying it's trying to roll over all 4 corners, but it's got enough oomoh now to be concerned for you. It pulls harder to redline across the band. While I wasn't convinced it would add 25hp as claimed (and am still not) but 25 hp/tq off idle is definitely a possible outcome. I haven't done any Dyno pulls nor do I plan to as this is my daily and Dyno pulls look drivetrain intensive (already replaced driveshaft... Not looking for that pain again.)

Another positive to this install now... I was experiencing the soft melty plastics at the top of the firewall. That is definitely an afterthought now. The engine bay was easily 100 degrees cooler after a spirited drive last night. Hoping this also plays into the life of my vacuum hoses so that the premature brittling is no longer a concern either.

Overall bang for the buck here is still unacceptable at M tax levels, but next up is the JB4 if I can get Burger or N54 to cut me a better deal than 2.5%. I wanted this done before hand. Again; The cost IMO is still too large for this mod, but my attempts to justify and overall smile factor has been huge.

If anyone is in Oklahoma and wants a reputable shop to have this job done on the cheap. PM me... I know a guy fully capable and shoptime cost was half of what I expected.

Thanks all and happy X5ing.

[deansbimmer]

Thanks for the review. I have these on my list and have been waiting for a used set to pop up. ///M tax on these is ridiculous.

If I may ask, how much of a bargain were you (or your shop) able to negotiate from the vendor?

[greddy91]

Just shy of $1300.

[jandref321]

Awesome! Enjoy!

[heatmizr]

What's up Pussycat?
What's a kitty? And why didn't you install it?

[jandref321]

Originally Posted by heatmizr

What's up Pussycat?
What's a kitty? And why didn't you install it?