Had a shop install the 140403 cat-back system. 1.5 hours of labor, clean install, more on the shop in a separate thread soon. Here is a pic of the rear...AFTER I had to make minor adjustments at home to center the driver side tips to my liking:
To get the driver side tips to line up in the opening, I had to make two adjustments: 1) installed a piece of 1/2" ID heater hose with a #6 clamp to position properly left to right...
2) added 4 washers under the metal exhaust hanger bracket to lower the tips for clearance at the top of the opening...
Not sure how long this is going to stay in position as I suspect the bracket will rotate around the bolt from vibrations over time.
Overall, it looks fine but both sides are not 100% matched. The passenger side tips are ~3/8" lower than the drivers side.
One odd thing is that after driving the tips "poke" out ~1" from heat expansion. Once cooled, they "retract" back to normal. Never really noticed this much movement before from a cat-back exhaust system.
Also, I am trying to track down a v-e-r-y faint noise of some sort that is heard once in awhile when off throttle and hit a sharp bump. It is barely audible so not sure what it is. I suspect it is the cross-member contacting a pipe when I hit a bump a very specific way.
As far as the exhaust sound goes, practically stock at cruise and idle - way quieter than I expected. A mellow, deep sound under acceleration and load, though not as crisp/sharp as I would have preferred. It sounds a little too muffled. I am hoping it opens up a bit after a few hundred miles and gets louder/sharper.
Finally, butt-dyno feels like I lost some low-end torque which I didn't expect from a full-system with 2.5" diameter pipe. That's just .25" over stock so volume/velocity shouldn't have had a huge impact on low-end torque. Maybe ECU still needs to recalibrate so again, will give it a few hundred miles before making a final judgement.
Overall, I'm a little disappointed with the fitment issues and subdued sound quality from a cat-back system at this price point. In retrospect, maybe I should have chopped out the OEM center resonator and replaced it with custom X-pipe to increase sound volume BEFORE dropping $2K on a cat-back system.
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