[s-cars] Sweeter Sound

[Chad Clark]

Matt,

Coming from the guy who's definitely BTDT, I'll try and save you some time, 
money and headaches.
I'm sure others will chime in with their experiences but here's what I did.

Like you, I wanted to hear my car run. I could not afford the Stromung 
system at the time and thought I could come close to the sound quality with 
simple muffler deletions trial and error.

Started with a simple cat delete on stock exhaust. No change in sound level 
that I could detect. I'd like to sit here and say that my seat-of-the-pants 
felt a bit quicker spoolup from the turbo but that may have been just 
wishful thinking at the time. Car came very close to passing the emissions 
test but nonetheless failed from high Hydrocarbons.

Next was the center muffler delete. The car could now be heard but I 
wouldn't call it sexy. Sounded more like a 5 cylinder truck engine. A bit 
anemic, wrong sound at WOT, short band(3500-5000rpm) where it sounded ok, 
quiet otherwise.

Next was a rear muffler swap with a 3" in/out Dynomax turbo unit. I had a 3" 
"Y" installed post dual cat-delete and a true 3" to the rear Dynomax box. 
Sorry I don't have the dimensions offhand. Now we were getting somewhere as 
the sound was deep and throaty but it droned too much. So now I needed a 3" 
center resonator installed to get rid of the drone. This helped and the car 
sounded pretty good but not as good as some of the Stromung systems that I 
had heard. Plus I still had the stock exhaust plumbing from the turbo. Even 
more, the system was cobled together with lots of welds and bends that 
looked like $hit, it hung too low and scraped over speed bumps.

As a side note, what I would have loved to hear is Dave Dawsons built motor 
with the 3.5" nascar oval pipe, turbo back, single rear muffler system 
before he threw some resonators on it. Apparently it sounded something akin 
to Audis Sport race motors at full wail, especially going through the 2 
miles of Eisenhower Tunnel at 10,000ft elevation. We really need to get some 
sound clips of this Dave!

Reluctantly I finally bought the generation 4 Stromung sytem, a true 3" 
turbo back stainless system, and have never looked back. Yes, its expensive 
but the system is well built, fits properly and more importantly(for me) 
sounds the best. I probably spent close to what I would have paid initially 
for the Stromung system on my cobled, wannabe, ghetto setup after all the 
trouble I went through to get it right. The only issue I had was I needed to 
file down the two mating flanges at the downpipe/mid pipe joint so that the 
sections joined up better. I was getting an exhaust leak at the base of the 
flanges because the two flanges weren't completely flat with each other.  
Took me about 1.5 hours of flat filing with a 12" bastard flat file. The 
only thing I think this system could improve on would be three hole flanges 
as opposed to two hole flanges so that others won't have this issue. Small 
issue for such a nice system though.

Obviously if I had to do it all over again, you know what I would have done 
from the start. Is the car any faster? Sure it is because it's louder and 
sounds better now:-)

Nothing to gain from Stromung, just a satisfied customer.
HTH,

Chad



>From: Matt Molyneux <mmolyneux at gmail.com>
>To: audifans <s-car-list at audifans.com>
>Subject: [s-cars] Sweeter Sound
>Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 02:21:08 -0400
>
>This is going to sound like a dumb question because it has nothing to do
>with performance at all, but bear with me. With the MTM spec software and
>the new tranny working well I'm just about perfectly happy with the S6
>again. I plan on doing some mild suspension mods as I have alluded to in
>earlier posts, but other than that there is only one thing about this car
>that has always irked me...the exhaust note.
>
>Sure the stock exhaust flows well, even for cars with more HP than I'll 
>ever
>make, but it just doesn't do the 5-cylinder justice. Reving the engine at a
>stoplight will get you more rolling eyes than anything else. I have driven 
>a
>car with a complete aftermarket exhaust and even though it was a while ago,
>I remember it sounding glorious, so I know this engine CAN sound great.
>
>So here's my question, what can be done about making the exhaust note much
>improved? I know I can try and track down a used exhaust system somewhere
>but it hasn't been too fruitful, and I know that Stebro and Stromung make
>good exhausts for this car but I really can't afford a completely new 
>system
>(besides I can't get a hold of Stromung). Therefore has anyone come across
>an inexpensive and practical way of improving the exhaust? Would high flow
>cats make it sound much better, or would changing the rear muffler be the
>best bet? What's the best source for these things? I'm asking because I
>really have not clue were to start. Thanks for any help.
>
>--
>Matt Molyneux
>Washington, D.C.
>1995 UrS6
>MTM Stage 1+, EDU 6-speed
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