cbh148

Mods, please move this if I've posted in the wrong section. My apologies.

Since I could not find any reviews (or any non-commercial information for that matter) for the latest Isis manifold, I decided I'd be the guinea pig and give it a try.

A bit of backstory:
My SR swap came with a low mileage Megan bottom mount manifold and after about 8 months of street use (in my possession), it cracked around the turbo flange. I had it patched up by a professional just to get me to a drift event that weekend, not expecting it to last a week, but surprisingly it made it 4 months before finally re-cracking along those same welds (cracks were on welds AND pipe, not just one). I wasn’t surprised that it cracked since they’re so notorious for tearing up, however I must say that I had a CXRacing bottom mount manifold back when I rocked a CA18, and even though it didn’t have the little support bracket that the Megan SR20 manifold has, it never gave me a single issue. Go figure.

So at this point, my options were to find a stock SR turbo manifold (cheap), ball out with a DOC/FullRace manifold (expensive), or to try the new Isis V3 manifold (fair). I had considered the Isis V2 since a couple of my friends have them and they do seem noticeably beefier than the Megan (and most every other Taiwanese 304 stainless manifold), but I figured I’d probably crack the V2 (my friend just cracked his yesterday). Furthermore, I refuse to run a stock manifold because, even though I’m sure they’re all fine and dandy for response/durability, I just flat-out cannot stand how low-pitched the exhaust note is with the stock turbo manifold. (It’s not that it’s such a bad sound, because it isn’t. But rather, my absolute favorite sounding engine is a proper high-pitch SR, which I figure requires a tubular manifold and ideally some nice cams and external wastegate. In other words, I love the high-pitch sound so much that the low-pitch exhaust note is inherently disappointing to me. Trivial to some, but vital to me since this is a fun street car to hit drift events with, not anything serious.)

I figured I’d try the Isis V3 and see what happened because, as of this posting (June 2014), there is zero information on the interwebs about the Isis V3 manifold. Literally nothing, other than retailer pages selling them and a single guy that posted some pics of one on a wooden table since he’s a dealer. Also, my friends at Built To Win Performance hooked me up with a nice discount on it, and said they’d build me a nice custom manifold if the Isis ended up being garbage. So after showing them all the pictures and information that was out there on the V3’s, they told me that it appeared like a stout manifold. They said the welds looked good in the pictures. So I laid down the cash for it.

First (and only) impressions:
Well you know how the hamburgers on the fast food menus look so goddam beautiful, but the one you actually get usually looks like it was slept on? Well. . . that. That happened.

The welds were laughable. It was painfully obvious that what they do is slap the manifold together using typical Stevie Wonder bubblegum welds, then go over those welds with some attempts at “pretty” welds for that DOC/FullRace look. Well I don’t buy it. Er, well I did, but fortunately Enjuku let me return that booboo with the quickness, and Built To Win put that money toward building me a legit custom manifold that will have an external wastegate setup (Tial MVS) for that super sexy high-pitch SR sound I want.

Now before you hop on your angsty elitist high horse and tout “well what did you expect for a bottom mount manifold that’s literally half the price of the DOC/FullRace manifold?” – I didn’t know what to expect, but I know it’s the first Taiwanese brand manifold to be made out of WeldEl schedule 40 piping, and with a pretty much risk-free shot on my hands (since I knew I could get my money back if need be), then why the hell not? Isis has improved some of their products with revisions and whatnot, so it didn’t seem impossible for them to just randomly get a turbo manifold sorted out. However, unfortunately for us, the Isis V3 is about as sorted out as a train wreck.

Now onto the pics. Here’s most everything I snapped of this monstrosity before promptly returning it. Having not actually used this manifold, you now see why I put quotation marks in the thread title.

__________________