Project Acura NSX Fujitsubo Exhaust - DC Sports Headers

To keep the exhaust subtle, Fujitsubo decided to not stamp the exhaust tips wiht the "Ti" logo unlike all their other exhausts in the Ti lineup. The hanger tubing is all hollow to reduce weight as well as the machined flanges that are only thick around the bolt holes. The purpling of some tubing sections comes from the added heat of the 180-degree turn.

To keep the exhaust subtle, Fujitsubo decided to not stamp the exhaust tips wiht the "Ti"

Our big weight reduction came from a new Fujitsubo Ti exhaust system. As one of the most respected exhaust manufacturers in Japan, Fujitsubo street products are made specifically to fit demure Japanese tastes. If you’re looking for a loud, annoying car, this isn’t the exhaust for you. Instead, Fujitsubo expects NSX owners to be more mature and discerning drivers, and so being, made an exhaust that is near stock in sound below VTEC, and very discrete. This is just as Honda intended and perfect for our tastes. You only get the angry howl when the car is intentionally driven in anger. Under these conditions, this exhaust tips the scales at 98 decibels, too loud to be legal for American streets. For this reason, the Fujitsubo Ti exhaust for the NSX is a special-order item here in the states. At a mere 19.8 lbs, the big benefit from the über-expensive and beautiful piece is the huge weight savings of 24.2 lbs off the stock 44-lb exhaust. Add in that we’ve taken all this weight off the end of the car means that there’s a significant change in polar moment making the car harder to spin. We also shed another 7 lbs by replacing the beefy stock catalytic converters with tubular high-flow units from Random Technology. With these two components alone we’ve moved the car’s weight distribution forward by 2 percent from 40.9/59.1 to 42.9/57.1 percent (front/rear). Added up, we’ve shed some weight off of critical sections of the car as well as gained 6 peak horsepower from our baseline.

Burns Stainless specializes in custom-built merge collectors that provide a smooth transition for each exhaust primary to collect into. The use of a merge collector is something typically done only in professional motorsports and is worth a noticeable gain in power and torque.

Burns Stainless specializes in custom-built merge collectors that provide a smooth transit

The last trick in our bag is to modify the original DC Sports headers. There’s nothing wrong with the out-of-the-box headers, but if you’re all uptight on squeezing out every bit of power from bolt-on plumbing, this is something that’s worth looking into. Most mass-production aftermarket tubular headers are exactly that—mass produced. Even a well engineered product like the DC unit has to save a little money in manufacturing to make it affordable. To do this, the collector (where the three primary tubes leading from each cylinder head merge together into one pipe) is typically a large pipe pinched around the three primary pipes and the entire thing is sealed together with a lot of weld. It’s ugly, but gets the job 80 percent done.

But there’s a secret to optimizing a header to your engine, and it’s not just in the proper length of the header primaries. The secret is a higher-quality merge collector that provides a very smooth transition for exhaust gas pulses to merge as they travel down the primaries. Few people know about this topic matter better than Jack Burns and his team at Burns Stainless in Costa Mesa, California. They specialize in making stainless and inconel exhaust parts for pro-level race cars and are world-renowned for their products among pro-stock drag racers, NASCAR and land-speed nuts.