So the wife and I just closed on a house about two weeks ago, and the DSL just now got hooked up, so I'm a little behind on things. But allow me to get to the core issue at hand. Our niftly little house has a niftly little 2.5 car garage in the back - a luxury that we weren't afforded in the apartment.

Now, my little grease monkey hands wants to do all kinds of fun stuff with my car in the garage, but there is a small problem. There's a whopping 8-9ft between our house and the next, and my baby is just a LITTLE too loud to drive between them. I don't just mean a little irritating. It shakes the plates in our kitchen cabinets. Cool as that may be, this is a sure fire way to kill any good relations we have with our neighbors.

I would ignore this, but the loudness of the exhaust has been bothering me a lot lately. It's just too much noise for a daily driver. So my question it this: is there a good way to tone it down 20-30 notches without robbing a lot of power? I remember akamiami saying he had installed two resonators in his car with good results, but I don't remember the details or the cost. I've thought about plumbing in a conventional muffler in place of the test pipe, and swapping out when I want to have some fun. Let me know your ideas.

I was looking at my performace catolages and
there is several different was you could go with this. All depending on the money issue!
#1-Matrix Muffler ( tuneable) $79.95
#2-Borla Mufflers $169.95- 190.95
#3-Dynatech Hi-flo Cat $149.99
W/ Supertrap Tuneable Muffler $159.95- 179.95
These few ideas are out of Summit Racing And Jegs!
Another neat trick is to use a exhaust cutout , cheap andeasy to
install . Flow Tech, Mr. Gasket, Summit Brand arejust a fewto name!
If by chance you have a header on you're car, something else to check out is
header inserts made by Car Chemistry. In the Summit cat they run
from $45.69 - 72.69.
Good Luck and I hope this helps!!
Grimy

Congrats on the house, Goat!

Does your current exhaust have a muffler? I know I've burned most of the fiberglass out of my muffler. I wonder if its the same kinda deal with yours.

I don't really know jack here, but if you have a slip-fit between the cat and muffler somewhere I'm sure you could get something from the slip-fit back that could help and be relatively easy to install/de-install.

I don't know where you're located but I knew who I'd have look into it in the Peoria area - but I'm sure you want to do it yourself. But if somethin' needs to be fabbed w/resonators and/or muffler...

And magnaflow helps in the muffler department w/o robbing TOO much power...

Good luck!

best idea ever

I'd just throw an OEM muffler on and use this!

Very cool. I had thought about the cutout, but not one that could be opened from the cab. I'm almost positive that's the route I'll take. That's going to be a fun little trick to play at a stoplight.

Nate, thanks for the congrats on the house. My current muffler is a dynomax of some nature. Maybe the ultra flow. I think the exhuast is a Bushur, but Justincredible would know better than I. Oh, and glad to see you've checked yourself.

Naramore's exhaust between Creve Coeur and East Peoria does magic on custom exhaust jobs.... they can help you out too.... maybe offer some suggestions too!!!

its a buschur 3" bah. too loud. can never be to loud.

Wait until you hear Frankenstein.

Will they weld up a cat eliminator pipe (test pipe)??

definately congrats on the house. I hope you love your garage because I'm about to be in the same boat and I'm REALLY looking forward to having the extra space.

so you're worried about your exhaust because of the drive up the driveway to get the car into the garage or you plan on keeping it running for extended periods of time in the garage? I don't quite get it.

As far as toning down your exhaust I'd take a three way approach involving a highflow cat, resonator and chambered muffler. If you get good stuff you'll probably be adding 3-5 psi of backpressure to the exhuast system total, but you'll drastically cut down on the noise factor. I know that the resonators I put in analube lowered the tone considerably and there's nothing like chambered mufflers to effectively baffle sound and cancel the waves. The problem is that most of us are initally only concerned with performance and so we opt with the straight through turbo mufflers. Only later do we realize that maybe it's worth the sacrifice of a few hp in order to really enjoy the car more. Those companies that make mufflers put serious r&d into their designs and it's not like they make mufflers for the purpose of limiting Hp, they try to get the best balance. once analube is back on the streets I plan on putting a more restrictive and quieter muffler in place.

It's the driving between the houses on my way to the garage that concerns me. I'd hate to pull in at midnight and wake up my neighbors (in their 70's) because they're super nice and have helped me out a lot.

In regards to your three-donged approach, could you shoot me some specific brands and model numbers for the resonator? I can scout out the cat and muffler on my own, but I'm extremely inexperienced when it comes to resonators.

I'll have to weigh all these options out to find the best bang for the buck, but I really like the idea of being able to turn my HP on and off with that switchable cutout.