Text & Photos by Tom Wilson
You'd think tubing exhaust gases to the atmosphere would be fairly dead science 100 years after the introduction of internal combustion, but not so. In one of the truly new innovations to hit in the last 10 years, X-pipes have risen to well-deserved prominence in exhaust-system design. The reason is X-pipes offer quieter, less boomy operation along with more torque and power than a conventional H-pipe.
Some of the challenges in X-pipe design are packaging, and on the business side, design time, production capacity, and CARB certification. But with performance improvements and thus sales beckoning, the tubing benders are definitely working on filling the X-pipe need. One of the giants in performance exhaust is MagnaFlow Exhaust Systems, and while the company already has 4.6 Mustangs covered with off-the-shelf X-pipe applications, the earlier 5.0 Mustangs are something else again. The difference is in how Ford's exhaust system is configured. Current-generation Mustangs are relatively easy to X-pipe, but the '93-and-earlier cars are more of a packaging challenge.
Putting catalytic converters into the design is yet another consideration, and while there have been several off-road, cat-less X-pipes on the market for a while, 50-state-legal X-pipes for '93-and-earlier late-models have been rare. As MagnaFlow prefers to develop products for the newest-model cars, then work backward chronologically, it is just now getting around to building a Fox Mustang X-pipe with cats. Naturally, this is where we came bursting through the door, breathlessly excited about exploring such virgin Fox Mustang territory, so here we are, fitting MagnaFlow's upcoming '93-and-earlier Mustang X-pipe, with cats, to our own'91 test hatchback.
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HORSE SENSE: Because we're presenting MagnaFlow's new X-pipe so early in its product cycle, it doesn't yet carry a CARB E.Q. number, but it will. MagnaFlow's own catalytic converters have easily passed all previous emission tests, and there's no reason the new X-pipe shouldn't do the same.
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