Lightweight but relatively quiet exhaust experiment

[5.0yote]

How do you like it and do you have a clip for it? It'll be interesting to see how one muffler doing the job of two mufflers and resonators will sound like, but I'm willing to accept a little increase in noise for weight reduction.

Edit: Did see a clip posted on your channel but it's hard to tell the difference between the Magnaflow and MAP mufflers due to the background noise.

Click on my you tube link in my sig I have lots of various clips of the exhaust setup with 3"DP big turbo, on stock turbo and DP, etc. All are based off the 3" to 2.5" y, resonators and the Magnaflow muffler setup.

I would not focus on the very first big turbo clip as far as a comparison between the MAP (Vibrant) mufflers compared to the Magnaflows, I never did an in cabin of the MAP original mufflers because they were so bad in the car I had them out withing a week of installing them. Just too much drone at all RPMS. I would focus on the other vids only pertaining to the magnaflow setup.

As far as how I like them. Volume is just right, they are deep and have a good full tone to them but not buzzy, or boomy, more of a refined sound. At idle you can tell its not stock and it has just enough volume at idle that you can hear them from 10 feet away and when you get up close its a good sound. I will get an updated clip posted this weekend in cabin and outside. (note I only have half the ANC setup disabled in cabin.)

In cabin is decent, no drone unless you are lugging it which you should not be doing anyway in high gear. As far as noise and volume on highway speeds, there is nothing annoying about it pretty much at any speed or RPM, you only start noticing it if your cruising over 80MPH @ 2500+RPMS but its still not drony.

I would love to test out a pair of Corsa sport mufflers on this and see how those sound problem is I do not like choppy sounding exhaust that gets buzzy when revs are high and most of the exhaust I hear other than my setup or race mufflers like MBRP/Magnaflow comps are too ricey if that makes sense. I like how mine does not sound like a honda, nor an ST/RS its somewhere in the middle.

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[Juben]

I'm running a CP-e catless downpipe (3") into a Vibrant bottle type resonator (2.5") and a GT cat-back w/factory mufflers (2.5"). It still has some volume when you open it up but it's very mellow at idle and cruising. I get a ton of compliments on it. I'm probably going to switch out to the Full Boar mufflers soon though and reinstall the GT tips on them.

 

[5.0yote]

Well on the plus side you cannot go wrong on larger mufflers as these turbos love to breath, its finding the right balance with the tone, volume, and drone with these.

 

[Bull Run]

Test results

The exhaust mod took much longer than expected and Steeda goodies from the Memorial Day sale came in, so I ended up doing a shorter test.

The objective test was conducted using the Decibel X app on an iPhone. A couple of revs were recorded from the inside with windows rolled up, and another couple of revs were recorded from about 5 feet away from the rear bumper.

Corsa 3" catted DP -> Borla Pro XS (3" inlet, dual 2.25" outlets) -> 2.25" EB piping -> GT mufflers
Avg: 86.3
Min: 74.6
Max: 97.1
Peak: 99.9

Corsa 3" catted DP -> MangnaFlow XL (3" inlet, dual 2.5 " outlets) -> 2.5" GT piping -> MBRP muffler delete pipes
Avg: 97.9
Min: 66.5
Max: 109.1
Peak 113.9

Stock GT pipes were cut at an angle, which forced the XL muffler to dip down at the end, causing a severe clearance issue. I'll need to have an exhaust shop fabricate a couple of pipes to make this work. Meanwhile, I decided to put a couple of short dump pipes right after the muffler to get by for now.

Corsa 3" catted DP -> MangnaFlow XL (3" inlet, dual 2.5 " outlets) -> 2.5" dump pipes.
Avg: 99.4
Min: 73.6
Max: 111.5
Peak: 113.9

As expected, there was some noise increase over the original setup, but the exhaust sounded pretty good. Even my helper thought it sounded good for a four banger.

Weight savings (scale shows pounds and ounces):

GT muffler (18.975 lbs or 37.95 lbs/pair)

MBRP muffler delete pipes with tips (6.331 or 12.662 lbs/pair)

MagnaFlow XL muffler (9.75 lbs, shorter and about 2 lbs lighter than Borla Pro XS)

Weight saving vs. original: around 27.288 lbs
Weight savings for dump pipes vs. original: 52.612 lbs, more like over 55 lbs since GT piping is also gone

I did record video clips of all three setups, will post them when I get more time.

 

[Rc18]

I have the rip off of that same muffler but the outlets are 2.5". Interesting as I figured weight savings of 25-30#
Bet your set-up is a little louder overall with the catted full 3" dp.

 

[Bull Run]

Video clips

Below are the exhaust clips. By the way, how do you embed YouTube videos?
Corsa 3" catted DP -> Borla Pro XS (3" inlet, dual 2.25" outlets) -> 2.25" EB piping -> GT mufflers


Corsa 3" catted DP -> MangnaFlow XL (3" inlet, dual 2.5 " outlets) -> 2.5" GT piping -> MBRP muffler delete pipes



Corsa 3" catted DP -> MangnaFlow XL (3" inlet, dual 2.5 " outlets) -> 2.5" dump pipes


I'm actually starting to like the dump pipes. I may keep it this way and gain additional weight savings on top of it.

 

[Bull Run]

Well on the plus side you cannot go wrong on larger mufflers as these turbos love to breath, its finding the right balance with the tone, volume, and drone with these.

Since you mentioned it, the turbo seems to hit harder now. I get a tire chirp when doing a half throttle acceleration.

 

[5.0yote]

Since you mentioned it, the turbo seems to hit harder now. I get a tire chirp when doing a half throttle acceleration.

The faster you can get the exhaust gasses out the turbine, the faster the turbo can spool up, and make more efficient power, there really is not a too open an exhaust setup with turbos, you can litterally do a strait up dump pipe off them practically. i.e. catless DP no exhaust aft that.

You will get faster spooling with no restrictions, and other than making sure all your shit is tight up front you should be good. Excessive exhaust pressure is no good on your turbo in the long run. I found out exactly how much back pressure is hurting turbo performance when I ran the stock DP and Resonator on my Precision turbo I lost 3-4 PSI of boost, that stock resonator is just garbage, its ok only up to about 20PSI then performance seems to suffer past about 23PSI and gets harder to maintain peak boost without lots of tuning the boost solenoid. Hence the hot spot you see on your resonator at the outlets. All back pressure.

You should see some improvements the larger you go. Side affect unfortunately with larger mufflers with little restrictions is more noise some ok, some unwanted and buzzy vibrations. (I.e. stock MAP catback mufflers I had were just untolerable).

 

[MagnaFlow]

Sounds sweet! We don't think we have had the chance to hear an EB with our XL mufflers before. Thanks for sharing the info on your setup!

 

[5.0yote]

I have to massage my exhaust setup now that I have a catless down pipe on my stock turbo, on the Precision turbo it was fine without cats, on the stock setup with a catless down pipe going into the Magnaflows I am running sounds awesome at idle, good cruise and mild acceleration but under WOT I am getting a weird Farty sounding blat that I did not have on the stock down pipe, or the big turbo with the catless down pipe. I am not sure if maybe I have a bad muffler or if my exhaust may be too open for the existing muffers.

I may have to change them out for something a little more beefy/open.

 

[Bull Run]

I decided to get the tailpipes welded on as excessive cabin noise with the dump pipes was getting old. It now sounds much better as the noise level is almost the same as the previous setup while idling and cruising. It is louder on fast idle and acceleration, but nothing obnoxious.

 

[Bull Run]

Sounds sweet! We don't think we have had the chance to hear an EB with our XL mufflers before. Thanks for sharing the info on your setup!

No problem? I think that this setup sounds similar to other aftermarket setups using two mufflers, so there's an opportunity to save a little weight and cost here.

 

[dgc333]

Not sure how much weight you are going to save. I weighed the stock resonator from Ecoboost, 13.5 lbs. The mufflers we're 15.2 lbs each. Both of these were with the pipes cut off flush. Compare this to the Flowmaster muffler I have in the garage at 14.8 lbs.

Just on appearances the chambered Magnaflow pictured looks to be more restrictive than a stock Ecoboost resonator. The resonator you can look in the inlet and see out the other side.

 

[Bull Run]

Not sure how much weight you are going to save. I weighed the stock resonator from Ecoboost, 13.5 lbs. The mufflers we're 15.2 lbs each. Both of these were with the pipes cut off flush. Compare this to the Flowmaster muffler I have in the garage at 14.8 lbs.

Just on appearances the chambered Magnaflow pictured looks to be more restrictive than a stock Ecoboost resonator. The resonator you can look in the inlet and see out the other side.

I disagree for the following reasons:

1. Stock resonator necks down to about 2.25", loss of around 0.75" coming from a 3" DP. Even the stock DP is larger than the resonator inlet. Magnaflow muffler I'm using has single 3" inlet and dual 2.5" outlets vs. single 2.25" inlet and dual 2.25" outlets for the stock resonator.

2. Even so, the goal was to use one Magnaflow muffler to replace two GT mufflers, which appear to be much less restrictive than the EB mufflers. And Magnaflow looks much less restrictive than the GT mufflers. I have pictures of insides of both EB and GT mufflers in my build thread.

3. If you look at one of the previous posts, I was comparing this to the setup I had before, which was a single Borla ProXS with dual GT mufflers. Weighing at about 9 lbs, MagnaFlow is about 3 lbs lighter than Borla. The weight difference between a GT muffler vs. a muffler delete pipe (including the tips) is about 12 lbs, or 24 lbs per pair. So a total of about 27 lbs of savings, which is significant at my level of weight reduction (CF trunk deck lid yielded about 8 lbs of savings). Tips are about 3 lbs/pair and clamped on, so those can be ditched if more extreme savings are needed.

4. The new setup is lighter even when compared to the stock exhaust. Using the numbers you provided, this setup should save about 21.5 lbs while flowing much better.

5. Not sure about the impact on a stock turbo, but VS2+ seems to be spooling up quicker with this setup vs my old setup, which still flowed better than the stock. Since the butt-meter's subjective, I'm going to do another dyno run in the fall when the ambient temperature's back down to low 80's (that's the temp when I did my previous dyno run) to see if it made a change to the torque/power curve.

 

[Bull Run]

Took some pictures of the new exhaust while the car was on jack stands.

3" DP to 3" inlet, followed by dual 2.5" outlets to GT resonator back pipes. Believe it over not, GT resonator outlets are necked down to close to 2.25". I sawed the necked down portions off, but it prevented GT pipes from going into the muffler straight, so I had a shop weld them on with an extension pipe.

The shop also tack welded the joints and clamps to prevent them from moving over time, but it's also preventing me from leveling out the tips. I'll just have them fix it.

Here are my thoughts on this experiment:

1. I went with dual rear pipes because I picked up the GT pipes for free, which allowed me to mock up the exhaust and drive around before welding them.

2. If I were to do this again from scratch, I would've just went with a single 3" pipe out the back, which should save about 10 additional pounds.

3. Compared to the previous setup, this is noticeably louder around low 1,000 RPM to low 2,000 RPM. Not much of a difference during warm idle or cursing around 2,500 RPM, which is the engine speed while I'm cruising on the city highway.

4. I ordered the OBDLink MX so I can use it with Forscan to disable ANC and fake engine noise to see if they make a difference.

5. I'm good with some added noise for weight savings and better flowing exhaust, but stick with GT mufflers if you want something that flows better than EB mufflers but need to keep the noise down as much as possible.

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