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Article Breakdown
  • Motivation
  • Installation
  • Performance
  • Sound
    • Supersprint Exhaust for the M roadster
    April 25, 1999
    By: Alan Riley
    Pros:Great Sound, Increased Performance, Visually Striking, 100% Stainless Steel
    Cons:Cost, Installation
    Cost:$1,402 (from BMP Design)
    $1,339 with free shipping (from HMS Motorsport)

    Exhaust uninstallationThe exhaust is held in place with bolts just aft of the catalytic converters (red arrows), and a set of brackets/rubber attachment points (second picture) at the rear of the car. The the middle there is a safety/backup hanger (blue arrow) which has a rubber belt around the middle of the exhaust.

    Some spray silicone lubricant on the middle bracket may make it easier to slide the belt holding the exhaust off the support. Once this middle connection is free you can remove the front bolts to break the connection to the catalytic converter. Lastly remove the bolts attaching the rubber hangers at the rear of the car.

    Careful AdjustmentAfter removing the stock exhausts, it is time to mount the new Supersprint exhausts. The best way to do this is to first guide the main support into the rubber hanger (blue arrow above) and then to loosely fasten the remaining brackets and bolts. Then, with a couple of people helping, you can align the exhaust and tighten the bolts. (Note that in most cases, we do not recommend hanging from the new exhaust as an alignment method.)

    More Adjustment
    Take your time while adjusting the new exhausts. Even when everything looks fine from under the car, you may still want to tweak the alignment. You want to make sure that the tips are not in contact with the plastic of the rear bumper. Maintain about a finger's width clearance between the tips and the lower lip of the bumper. Also, stand behind the car and check that each side is symmetrical. As you can see from the picture above, the right tips are slightly rotated clockwise, and need to be adjusted for a better match with the left side.

    There were only two negatives to the installation. The first is just due to the inexperience of the reviewer--alignment took a long time. If you have an exhaust shop install your exhaust, this is a non-issue. The second negative is that the new exhausts did not come with 4 necessary nuts and washers. The stock exhaust has nuts integrated into its brackets which bolts go into, while the Supersprint exhaust just has holes in its brackets which bolts go through. This necessitated a quick trip to a hardware store, and cost about $1.00. It is not clear if the missing nuts were an oversight or if they must always be purchased separately, but Supersprint has been notified of this slight glitch and is looking into the issue.

    Overall, the installation was uneventful, and took about 2 hours--not bad for a do-it-yourself job. A muffler shop would probably knock out the job in less than half the time. The final result is a set of 4 gleaming tips which emit a healthy growl.

    Final Result

    Ok, so it looks and sounds great. Now you want to know about the performance:

    Performance

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