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399 Posts
Okay, so here's the deal: I have recently acquired an 03 Aero Wagon that has 200k on the ticker, but is in pretty good shape! It has rusty exhaust piping where the down pipe meets the flex pipe. The guy doing my tranny needed to cut the pipe right behind the 2nd cat, but before the joint where the down pipe meets the flex pipe in order to facilitate the removal of the tranny.
So here is my dilemma (not really, but I want opinions here other than just re-welding the cut joint...)
1) I'm not finding anything in 3" down pipes for less than about $500 bucks. Most are in Europe and need to be shipped, which could take weeks. Maybe I can have one fabricated for fairly cheap? Has anyone here had a down pipe custom fabed?
2) The rest of the exhaust looks pretty good, but I was thinking I'd have the local muffler guy replace the piping from the 1st cat down to the 2nd cat in 3" tubing re-using the original cats, and continue the 3" piping all the way back to the main/rear muffler deleting the middle resonator from the system. Would this get as good of flow as say, an aftermarket exhaust that keeps the center resonator?
3) Noise level without the resonator... Would it be obnoxious, or just more throaty sounding? I'm not a ricer kind of guy.... Sporty is ok, but I don't want a hornets nest.
Any thoughts on what I should do, or should I just have him replace the rusty area piping with the stock size from the 2nd cat back to the resonator and save some $? He won't have an exact quote until I bring the car in.
Long term goals: I just had a (stage 1?) tune done on an ECU for 295hp/275lb torque that remains to be installed once the tranny proves to be ok. I might put in a cone intake and FMIC at some point. I plan on keeping this car for another 100k)
Thanks for all your $.02 Maybe I'll end up with $.20 when it's all said and done :lol:
So here is my dilemma (not really, but I want opinions here other than just re-welding the cut joint...)
1) I'm not finding anything in 3" down pipes for less than about $500 bucks. Most are in Europe and need to be shipped, which could take weeks. Maybe I can have one fabricated for fairly cheap? Has anyone here had a down pipe custom fabed?
2) The rest of the exhaust looks pretty good, but I was thinking I'd have the local muffler guy replace the piping from the 1st cat down to the 2nd cat in 3" tubing re-using the original cats, and continue the 3" piping all the way back to the main/rear muffler deleting the middle resonator from the system. Would this get as good of flow as say, an aftermarket exhaust that keeps the center resonator?
3) Noise level without the resonator... Would it be obnoxious, or just more throaty sounding? I'm not a ricer kind of guy.... Sporty is ok, but I don't want a hornets nest.
Any thoughts on what I should do, or should I just have him replace the rusty area piping with the stock size from the 2nd cat back to the resonator and save some $? He won't have an exact quote until I bring the car in.
Long term goals: I just had a (stage 1?) tune done on an ECU for 295hp/275lb torque that remains to be installed once the tranny proves to be ok. I might put in a cone intake and FMIC at some point. I plan on keeping this car for another 100k)
Thanks for all your $.02 Maybe I'll end up with $.20 when it's all said and done :lol: