I figure this has been beat to death, but I cant find any recent threads on the topic. Looking to do catless headers and aftermarket exhaust. Anyone have a combo they would recommend? Im looking for sporty but not obnoxious sound.

Thanks

 

I went back and forth between exhaust setups after I installed ARH long tubes. GMMG, Magnaflow, SE Duals, Corsa and back to Magnaflow. The Magnaflow just does a fantastic job of taming a cat-less LS1 without having to add a bunch of extra crap to the exhaust like resonators or anything like that. Yet still gets rowdy when you lay into it. The rasp of a Y pipe LS1 is what gets obnoxious to me and GMMG was the worst without cats. The Corsa was on my car for about 30 minutes and I literally took it all back off the same night. Idle presence was awesome but, inside the car was ridiculous! Duals ground clearance sucked on a lowered car and I got sick of it. I have amazing clearance with my car now lowered 1.25" and I'm not changing it any more. Its perfect for me!

 

Just curious how you have less ground clearance with duals vs the y pipe?
The crossover for the Y pipe is by far the lowest part of my exhaust now and parking lots with speed bumps are impassable.

it appears if I notch the floor brace i can gain about 1" of room to move the exhaust up a little.

 

Everything about the duals just didn't fit well. May have been my car, I don't know. I got sick of always messing with it and tweaking and welding and still scraping on everything. My ARH LT's and Y setup just has way better ground clearance than my duals ever did.

 

do you have resonators in your system? I was considering a cheap Speed Enginnering kit and just welding in resonators. Im just brain storming here. If its a dumb idea feel free to tell me.

 

No sir. No cats, no resonators in my current setup.

 

I have Kooks headers....a quad tip magna flow ...sounds perfect....not to loud....not to quiet....had a borla before.....HATED IT

 

High flow cats make headers totally livable.

 

Seeing that I didn't know what direction I wanted to go with my car, I went a budget friendly route. I did the Speed Engineering long tubes and ORY. I also purchased an OBX brand stainless steel catback exhaust off of Ebay. It has quad tips making it look similar to the Corsa kit and has a mellow tone similar to that of an old Magnaflow system I used to have. I think there are better sounding setups out there by the bigger name brands, but I ultimately got a full stainless exhaust front to back for well under a grand.

 

I did speed engineering on my 4th gen 17/8 with their true dual sounded damn good at full throttle completely different than y pipe, wish i had gone with 13/4 headers as i noticed a power loss during normal driving, crazy how that was the first thing i noticed when driving to the spot i could go WOT.

 

This is the real world difference between part throttle driving and full throttle on a dyno sheet. Dyno sheets show a gain for the larger headers almost everywhere.