So after years of searching and finally acquiring my Akrapovic EVO Titanium X-Pipe, I’ve come to realize and discover why the Akrapovic Titanium Xpipe is still one of the best x-pipe choices for this platform. The workmanship and quality are second to none.
The weight of it is very impressive for something that still retains secondary cats. The Akrapovic Evo is the balance between being a full-on race car and having a street/OEM+ car. The weight savings alone can be felt immediately and the characteristics of how the car drives is incomparable to any other style x-pipes I have tried.
However, there was one downfall with this masterpiece. You were forced to use their rear exhaust system as the piping was not adaptable to the traditional ball-fitting flanges that were found in most standardized rear sections for the E9x M3.
RKP was the first to introduce a solution several years back, their adapters allowed you to mate the Akrapovic x-pipe to any brand rear section. Meaning you could mate the titanium x-pipe to a stainless steel rear section which offered a very unique sounding combination. In recent years these adapters are impossible to find. IND no longer sells them and has listed them as a discontinued product.
I’ve tried searching everywhere for these adapters, and they were nowhere to be found. The only way is if you ever get lucky enough to get them used by another forum member. Over these past few years only a few have ever come up for sale in the classifieds, and many sellers force you to buy the whole system from them. Rarely were the RKP adapters ever parted out from an x-pipe.
There is a good reason why many sellers also refuse to part out the adapters, the adapters from RKP were so tight and seized on the x-pipe that it made it impossible to remove without butchering them. RKP decided to use titanium for the piping which mimicked the finish on the Akrapovic system but the ball fitting flange from the two-piece design was made out of aluminum. Over time with heat, the aluminum ball flange shrunk and eventually corroded/galled with the titanium piping on the x-pipe.
Fast forward to today. I was able to reach out to a machine shop that is willing to take on the task of remaking these adapters so they can be available for the masses that have been unable to get their hands on a set of the RKP ones. That being said, the machine shop that I have spoken with specializes in Titanium alloys, and they can remake the adapters for us, also addressing the removal issues with RKP’s original design.
For those wondering, these are not the same thing as the adapters that are being sold on CarID. Those ones are smaller and fit on the Akra rear section of the exhaust with clamps to use the OEM ball flanged x-pipe. You cannot simply make a ball fitting and use the Akrapovic® P-EXT002 – Adapter. It will not work, ask me how I know…
This will be a limited run and not something they will be producing regularly. Titanium pricing has increased 20-30% as a commodity over the past few years, so the pricing that the machine shop had told me is to ballpark around $400 - $450 shipped within North America depending on how many people we get signed on this group buy. The majority of the cost will be for the mold/jig they will be making for the adapters and titanium piping for such a small batch order.
With enough interest, the machine shop is able to send out a sample unit to me for testing as soon as next week!
For those who are interested, please add your name to the list so we can get this going! The adapters will work with both the Akrapovic Evolution x-pipe and GT4 x-pipe.