[s-cars] Sweeter Sound

[Postupack, Jeff]

Matt:

I admit to being biased toward Stromung , because I endured 4
generations plus all the fame and pain of being the GP guy.
I've been working this problem 4 years now.  What a masochist!

That being said here's my ideas.

I've owned Gen 2,3 and now Gen 4 is on my S4. This is the revision Chad
refers to.
_Many_ people contributed to this edition and the component is better as
a result.
Stromung held price for 2.5 years now at the GP level despite material
cost inflation.

If you are seriously considering an exhaust replacement at all, and you
will keep your S car,  buy a new Stromung Gen 4,  NOT a used one.

It's no sense to go thru the trouble and installation expense if you
find a used Gen 2 for example, and learn about the boom and drone of
early generation systems 
now solved in Gen 4.

Gen 4 is it..save your money, buy a new one.

Built from type 304 stainless everything, including the flanges!  Drops
your vehicle weight 70 pounds, sounds freakin' killer if you prefer deep
rumble at idle 
plus ripping roar at WOT. In the cabin though it exudes a very high Wife
Acceptance Factor  because it is not noisy.

Performance?  I'm not going to touch that one as I did not spend money
for before and after dyno results to satisfy curious technical minds.

Many of us think it is a very good improvement based upon uncalibrated
butt dyno's.
We even had one Sargeant Shultz hang his head out the window assessing
audio quality compared to Stebro in a live 'evaluation'
Didn't we Paul?

I read carefully Chad's comments about parallel flange surfaces and
three hole flanges.
However the demand for this system has declined to where Stromung would
need a fitment car in LA to improve the system.

I sent you the Powerpoint this morning to supply the details,  write if
interested.

Jeff




Message: 1
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 14:26:15 -0400
From: Matt Molyneux <mmolyneux at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Sweeter Sound
To: Chad Clark <chadaclark4 at msn.com>
Cc: s-car-list at audifans.com
Message-ID:
	<f283ba70510101126v765c94faw63479207dd1dec46 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Thanks for the advice. I'm getting closer to the Stromung. It's gonna
require some saving though. In the meantime if anyone has a used
Stromung for sale, let me know. Thanks.

On 10/10/05, Chad Clark <chadaclark4 at msn.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>