>>Yep,
>>Installed it myself with the car on jackstands and me on a creeper. It was a pain in the butt! The main difficulity was in getting everything lined up, the tips centered and nothing bumping the chassis. If I had it to do all over again, I would have paid to have a pro install it for me. My tips are just slightly missaligned, although I am sure nobody notices it but me.
>>
>>Other than that, I like the exhaust. It sounds great and it looks great.

notpaddyhopkirk,
It was exactly the same for me, I feel your pain, I could hardy walk for two days!
Mine is slightly off center to the passenger's side, looks and sounds great. Yours looks great! Do you feel a noticeable power improvement? Regards, Itzamazn

 

Sorry for the slow response... I don't come here as often as I used to.

As for a noticable power improvement... the car is just so damn fast, even with the stock exhaust, that I can't really tell. It is certainly no slower, and it sounds faster. I haven't done any timed runs or put it on the dyno and I am not going to be one of those guys who says "my car really pulls harder since I put those new lightweight windshield wipers on."

What about you? Any quantified results?

 

notpaddyhopkirk,
If there is a difference, I can't tell how much because when you have the pulley, and Intake the exhaust difference is a small percentage gain at best. I do love the sound that the three together make. I also like the oval tips better than anything else I've seen.
By the way on Randy Webb's Forum he says he thinks it's the Playmini exhaust. I have seen pictures of the Playmini exhaust and it looks exactly the same ecept for the clamps. Best Regards, Itzamazn

 

For $549.00 one might deduce that the Scorpion exhaust is somehow inferior to, say, Borla or Milltek. Does anyone have any solid data on the differences in quality? I like the idea of not having the third muffler/resonator at the front of the system, since the front of the car is lower and there isn't one there in the stock exhaust.



`

 

Guess not.

 

Funny, I missed this thread first time around... and no one has talked about the famed "Scorpion" since

 

I like the basic concept of this exhaust, but I dislike the extra, restrictive curvature ofthe piping around the mufflers.

 

>>I like the basic concept of this exhaust, but I dislike the extra, restrictive curvature ofthe piping around the mufflers.

Is that worse than the straight pipes with 90 degree elbows that the Milltek has?

 

It looks like they went to some effort to avoid 90 degree bends. Note the smooth curves all the way back to the tips.

 

I can't comment on the MCS exhaust, but I had a scorpion on my old 325i for quite a while. The quality and fit is excellent. Not as nice as say a remus, but just as nice as a triflow, and not as noisy. The ones bavarian sells are TUV approved which is kind of like the US DOT , so they aren't that loud.Same deal with a remus.One of the nicest things I see about the scorpion is its actually a bolt-on. Most of them i've seen you have to cut and clamp the front pipe on. Also scorpion is a UK company. Most places don't carry them. Bavarian imports them directly.For a stainless exhaust, it's tough to beat it for the money.

 

are there dyno hp/torque numbers available?

 

I couldn't find any marketroid lies on their web site, and I haven't been able to find any test data here on NAM. In fact, there is very little serious discussion of Scorpion whatsoever here. Here is a link in which people discuss a preference for the Borla over the Scorpion for no particular reason:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...mp;topic=12565

Here is something from MINI2 that's slightly more helpful:
http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=29049
http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29546

 

Exhaust splits into two mufflers to go around the battery box in the MCS. Why they don't go straight out with a tail pipe on each side of the car rather than having two more bends on each side to bring the exhaust to the center, I do not know.

 

>>Exhaust splits into two mufflers to go around the battery box in the MCS. Why they don't go straight out with a tail pipe on each side of the car rather than having two more bends on each side to bring the exhaust to the center, I do not know.

pretty sure the original cooper s had a center exit exhaust. just a retro design integrity thing, i think.

 

"pretty sure the original cooper s had a center exit exhaust. just a retro design integrity thing, i think. "

I get it, form over function.

 

>>It looks like they went to some effort to avoid 90 degree bends. Note the smooth curves all the way back to the tips.

 

>>>>It looks like they went to some effort to avoid 90 degree bends. Note the smooth curves all the way back to the tips.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>The curves are indeed smooth, but they're actually going past 90 degrees at each corner in this system. Ideally they should be going less than 90.
>>

Well, they're less than 90 degrees at each bend. You have taken two bends--the one from the single pipe to the split and the one after the split--and added them together to total >90 degree corners.

However, the result is more bends altogether, which is the real issue. Are more bends <90 degrees worse than fewer corners that are 90 degrees?

 

>>However, the result is more bends altogether, which is the real issue. Are more bends <90 degrees worse than fewer corners that are 90 degrees?

You're right, I was using the terms bend & corner interchangeably.

My gut feeling is that more <90 degree bends would net the greatest restriction as long as the otherwise 90 degree corners were made at a reasonable radius. But, it's been too long since my fluids classes for me to remember the actual formulas to calculate this.

 

Hard to tell.

Funny how little discussion there has been of this exhaust. I was hoping someone would come out with a definitive reason why Scorpion is inferior to the exhausts that are discussed regularly on this site. Peculiar.

One thing I like better about Milltek is that it's not slip-fit, but I understand that several of the other exhausts are slip-fit as well.

 

Darksky, Itzamazn, notpaddyhopkirk,

You've all had the Scorpion for several months now. How is it?

I'm going to go check this place out.

Bavarian Autosport
275 Constitution Avenue
Portsmouth NH 03801
800.535.2002
603.427.2002

 

Looks like a good system. I have gotten very interested in it as I read the thread. I was considering the Miltec.

 

>>Exhaust splits into two mufflers to go around the battery box in the MCS. Why they don't go straight out with a tail pipe on each side of the car rather than having two more bends on each side to bring the exhaust to the center, I do not know.

There used to be a thread about an S that had been lightened as a project. I recall that one of the things done to it was that the battery box was cut, and the pipe went straight from the cat to the tips with no bends.

 

it really doesn't matter how many bends you have in the piping as long as they are mandrel bends... as long as the manufacturer didn't use "el cheapo" machine to "pinch-bend" regular piping, which a lot of local shops do.

as far as the scorpion exhaust goes, its mere mystery makes it enticing.... no one has actually dynoed it or given any performance reports... i would like to see a video clip of a car equipped with it. we have seen video clips of the UUC, Milltek, and Borla.... time to build the library.

i too, would be interested in how this compares to the Milltek. Some other exhausts out there are just too loud and this sounds about right from descriptions.

-ABT-

 

>>it really doesn't matter how many bends you have in the piping as long as they are mandrel bends... as long as the manufacturer didn't use "el cheapo" machine to "pinch-bend" regular piping, which a lot of local shops do.


That's not true. Every bend, mandrel or not, is going to add resistance to flow. The excessive bending in this system turns the flow back towards the front of the car before and after the mufflers. This can't be good, especially in a system with only 2.25" diameter piping.

However, the lack of a resonator and the fact that it uses a "Y" split vs a "T" give this exhaust the potential to perform well despite its large number of bends.

 

>>true, but on a grander scale you have to realize that the air moving through the exhaust is not stagnant, it is constantly being "forced" out, (thats where the pressure comes in.) When you have the pressure levels you sustain in an exhaust system, that slight "diversion" of air seemingly backwards would be a moot point methinks...

>>agreed.

-ABT-