Introduction
IMHO a sports car just isn't right without a dual exhaust. Given a choice (and a birthday requiring a shiny present to myself :-), I went mad and bought the best: a Flyin' Miata dual exhaust. It wasn't cheap (after shipping to the UK!). But oh boy is it shiny!

...as you can see! Its all stainless-steel construction should hopefully mean it'll last for yonks. It certainly does seem very well made, and the tips are just gorgeously chunky. I remember with a grin that some manufacturers spray their silencers black so they can't be seen - but looking at this one, you almost want to fit some kind of mirror under the car so the people following you can see how beautiful it is :-)

In the (big!) box was the exhaust, 2 pages of clear, illustrated fitting instructions, and an extra hanger bracket and rubber hanger. I also bought some exhaust jointing putty to ensure a good seal on the joint.

Fitting
Fitting took me just under 2 hours, as I was very careful to get everything right. The first and almost the longest task was to get the car up on axle stands, as I was unsure of a good spot for them, and really didn't want to be squished or damage the car in any way!

The scary part came next - cutting a hole out of the plastic bumper to accomodate the second exhaust tip. You only get one go at holes, so I was understandably nervous! The kit includes a stick-on template to shape the hole, so it was a simple matter of measuring, tacking the template in place with sellotape, standing back, checking, holding the dual exhaust in place and asking a friend if it looked centred, standing back and looking again, re-measuring, sticking the template on properly, checking again, measuring just to be certain, then eventually trusting my judgement, cutting carefully and slowly with a small hacksaw blade, and finally swearing loudly when I found the hole was slightly too far to the left!! But not too far out - I'm sure nobody will really notice it. But quite annoying after all the care that went into trying to get it right!! (I think my measuring prowess is a major reason why I never became a carpenter)

The rest of the install went very smoothly, although getting the old exhaust out of the rubber hangers was a bit tough on my fingers (hindsight hints: apply a spray-on grease and if things don't slide out easily, apply a bit of finesse with a very small screwdriver to ease the edge of the rubber past the stops! Using a strong cardboard box to support the underside of the silencer while working it free was also a great help. Finally, I wore safety glasses, and avoided getting a lot of crud and plastic shavings in my eyes!)

Next, an extra hanger must be fitted by removing one bolt from the heat shield and slotting the bracket behind the shield - the supplied bracket was not quite long enough, so I had to file about a millimetre off the edge of the shield to get it to fit perfectly.

Finally, I just had to lift the FM exhaust into place - I slotted it onto the 2 bolts at the end of the main pipe first, then it was really easy to get the rest hooked into the hangers. I was able to re-use the original gasket on the joint, and added a bit of exhaust jointing putty to ensure a good seal, before tightening the 2 nuts to complete the joint. A gentle drive to heat and set the putty finished off the job.

Results
Firstly: It looks great! (Well, I think so). See the images page for a nicer picture, but here's how it looked about 17 seconds after I had it off the axle stands:

Some people have mentioned problems with dual exhausts hanging too low (or one side hanging lower than the other), but this install looked perfectly positioned the moment I slid the last hanger into place.

How does it sound? Fan-tas-tic! At idle, it burbles purposefully. Just below 2000rpm, there is a bit of unpleasant resonance in the cabin, but as I spend minimal time below 2000rpm (in 1st gear only), this really isn't a problem, except maybe occasionally when crawling in awful traffic. When accelerating it sounds excellent and quite eager, and cruising at motorway speeds it's really very quiet (with the throttle relaxed at 4000 rpm it is almost silent, and above about 65mph it's hard to hear over the wind with the top down unless you open up the throttle), so long journeys aren't a problem. The dual tips do not create any unpleasant interference 'beats' either. Heel-and-toeing (blipping the throttle on downshifts) sounds utterly awesome too!

Since fitting it, I can no longer hear my RSpeed air intake - the noise from the front has been moved to the rear and is also, of course, blasting out in stereo now! It sounds a lot better than the stock exhaust.

Whatever - I am now resigned to being uncouth because there's no way I ever want to go back to the stock exhaust! The noise also turns heads. I'm used to going for a drive on a hot summer day and having some people turn to watch me pass, but now, most people look! Travelling inconspicuously might prove a little difficult in future!

This also has an unexpected benefit - other road users are far more aware of my presence. Pedestrians keep out of my way, cars in front know when something is overtaking them and generally give me plenty of room, and black BMWs no longer try to run me down at roundabouts nearly as often as they used to! I also had a beautiful TVR actually stop in the road ahead of me to let me catch up so he could see what the car behind him was before playfully racing off again! As expected, he pulled away from me, but he was obviously impressed by the noise I made going through that motorway underpass :-)

If you'd like to know how it sounds, here are 2 sound samples to give you a general impression. You will need speakers with decent bass to do them justice:

And performance? The car is definitely a bit more lively, but with that sound chasing you, it feels a lot more lively! It's especially eager accelerating in 2nd out of roundabouts and intersections... or am I just thinking of me? :-) The car's official top speed is 127mph, but (under safe and legal conditions) I have reached 132mph (with the top down, so my true top speed should be a few mph higher with the top up to reduce drag), and on track my Mark2 is at least as fast down the straights as any other normally-aspirated MX5 it has come up against.

Finally, I'd just like to thank Flyin' Miata: First for designing an absolutely fantastic exhaust, and secondly for their extremely helpful and friendly service.

June & August 2001