3" Catback vs. TD's
 

I am contemplating on what I want to put on my car. As of right now I have stock exhaust with a cutout and the interior resonance is killing me with my A4. I am not sure what my plans are for the car. I know that I will at least be getting longtubes and maybe a stall in the future. A cam and heads would be nice but that would be forever away.

I am wanting to stay away from something that will have a lot of interior resonance and cause even more rattles. I had a hooker 3" aerochamber catback w/no cats on my old LT1 car and the sound was amazing. I am steering away from true duals mainly because of the rattles, interior noise, ground clearance, and the fact that my TA bumper will look empty.

NOW, what do you guys think that I should do at this point? Money is DEFINITELY an issue. I can get TD's with dumps for $200 plus the cost of the mufflers here in town or I can spend less and actually get a custom 3" exhaust for a little less and give me all the things that I think I want...

Well sounds like you already made up your mind. However, although it may not be what you want to hear, TD's will get my vote over any catback from now on. I just put the whole setup on my car and it is awesome. The sound is loud but very grin-inducing. My wife loves it and that's saying something as she normally hates anything like this. Most importantly, I LOVE it. You can get some good sounding mufflers that aren't really loud, or you can get Sweet Thunders that will wake the dead. There are a few small rattles here and there, nothing that bothers me at all. My cutout created a lot more rattles. I picked up MPG and my first track visit netted me .4 and 4 MPH. I just filled up and had 22.5 MPG. Before I was getting 19-20. And this is my second 22 MPG average since the install.

ive heard that borla XR-1 with 2.5 in/out on true duals has very little interior resonance. thats what im getting if i go over to duals

By the way, Sweet Thunders have very little interior resonance IMO. My cutout was unbearable, but the TD's are almost not noticeable. Yes there is a little, but very little. I can certainly live with it.

Catback gets my vote. TD's are over rated IMO. Unless you go all the way out the back. :devil:

WHAT?! True duals are the shit! They are loud though. :) With my cam thumping along I have to yell to talk to somebody standing on the other side of my car. (ie talking over the top of the car) Add a cam and high stall converter to dumped duals and conversation while accelerating on larger roads becomes difficult. I suppose you could go with quieter mufflers than my dynomax bullets and/or add cats.

That said there are some nice sounding cat-back systems. Magnaflow maybe? Or hooker.

True duels are overrated they make no more power than a cat back.. my vote magnaflow....

And what do you base this on? Duals shine in power under the curve. Do you have data to support your opinion? Besides that, they sound SO much better. (IMO, and many others, though everyone is different)

I got the duals off my car cause I hated the interior noise, it drove me crazy. Rattled the interior parts and everything else. I loved the sound at WOT, but im not WOT all the time.

I'm thinking of going back to a catback, my duals are just to loud 5:00 in the morning.

I do miss my Magna Flow catback :hail:


I don't really care about the power loss, just want to shut the car up :bomb:

https://ls1tech.com/forums/showthrea...hlight=bassani

well here let me blow that opinion out of the water. in this thread about the bassnai tru-dual, there are 3 dynos comparing it to stock, borla, and that precious magnaflow. all lost out. and that's going all the way out the back!!!

By no means do any of us wish to take anything away from catbacks. There ARE really good ones. I've just never heard anything quite like the TD's. Mine are dumped and it isn't that loud. There are a few rattles, nothing serious at all. It is mellow and bearable at part-throttle, and my god it screams at WOT. The power gain was VERY noticeable. If you want a catback, then get that.....it's all about you anyway.

I'm sorry.
The discussion is about true duals.
Not tru-duals.

When you make all of these comparisons, please note that "True Duals" (and Tru-duals for that matter) replace most of, if not all, the Y pipe.
To accurately compare true duals to a single, make sure you indluse a nice QTP, Kooks, or Mufflex Y-pipe with a Flowmaster merge.
Ive had all three now, and the Flowmaster merge Y takes any good catback over the top, imho. I currently have the "Tru-duals", and they are down on midrange to the nice Y pipe (its going back on) in combination with a Mufflex 4"

Quote: Ive had all three now, and the Flowmaster merge Y takes any good catback over the top, imho. I currently have the "Tru-duals", and they are down on midrange to the nice Y pipe (its going back on) in combination with a Mufflex 4".

Visceral:
Do you think there is anything to be gained going to the flowmaster merge, with stock exhaust manifolds and cats? It looks like a better design than the Y on my SLP y-pipe.

I know a guy with true duals on a SS Camaro, with heads, 232 236 112 cam, and kooks headers. It sounds freaking wicked idling for sure, but at some throttle postions it sounds like a dump truck :barf: Some people think louder is always better, I could care less how loud it is if it sounds like shit (not impling duals do) I love the way the Hooker catback sounded on my pewter car, it had an awesome tone all the time, and I could actually talk to someone beside me. Loud as shit may be cool when your around some buddies at a local cruise, but try talking to your woman on the cell or while she's in there with ya and it freakin sucks. Everyone has an opinion and that's mine............for now anyway.

I had a Kooks catted-y going into a Hooker cat-back that made 331/347. Switched to these true duals:

http://www.image-hosting.net/images/...2/IMG_0979.JPG

which I'm sure many of you have seen, and made 340/356 on my stock internalled M6 SS.

Now, that being said, my setup was the only way I would do true duals (no dumps for me). It was really $$$ though.

My recommendation - go with a Hooker, and if you can, no cats. It is cheap, fits well, and sounds great with headers.

So you removed the cats? I could see that getting you 10/10...

There probably is, although it may not be too much more than a few HP. Now if I could get a few HP for $100-150... I'd go for it, but you may not be at that bad of a place. I only have the expensive stuff left.

QUOTE: There probably is, although it may not be too much more than a few HP. Now if I could get a few HP for $100-150... I'd go for it, but you may not be at that bad of a place. I only have the expensive stuff left.

Well I bought the flowmaster merge today. I figure $38 for a few horsepower is pretty good. Thats cheaper than a K&N, and every little bit counts...right? I'm not doing lt's or td's, so I want to optimize what I've got.