twin_ snails your G sounds REALLY GOOD man.

 

Xmas, so two more months.

My bday is in January, so the wife likes it when I buy big (ish) chit for myself and claim it for the holiday. It's a fair trade off, because she does most of the shopping for the kids anyway. Last year, my holiday item was the FI RHFCs, and I bought her an iMac. This year I'm getting the cat-back, and she's getting a $25,000 kitchen remodel.

Seems a fair trade.

 

Awesome. Bonus points if you actually get away with getting your wife nothing more than a kitchen remodel for Christmas.

My wife and I end up having a similar arrangement for the holidays, except things generally work out more in my favor than hers

 

12". If you dont like then go 18". Just don't go to bed with your ears ringing after a long day and drive. It gets tiring after a while.

 

i went with 12" Vibrant resonators, standard bottle type. they eliminated rasp and certainly reduced overall noise and booming/droning, however there is still some drone depending on load and gearing. being 6MT actually makes it more noticeable. a 7AT will probably change gears sooner than i would for various reasons, and this would mitigate the droning that a 6MT may have. to be honest, i would have gone with 18" if they would have fit. my problem was finding a straight run of pipe - which limited me to 12" since i didn't want to shift anything else around.

i have a custom cat-back 2.5" with x-pipe and magnaflow mufflers on the rear. initially i thought my exhaust was the magnaflow kit exhaust for the G sedan since it looks very similar (http://www.magnaflow.com/02product/s...ne=all&id=9378), however their kit has reso's included. unless the previous owner (who installed it) changed something up...but with the relatively small mufflers, there just was not enough suppression to muffle the rasp inherent to our VQ.

 

Lance said there was one other girl that has non-resonated, but I'm not sure on piping diameter...I'm thinking Michigan but I could be wrong. So far she's been a ghost and I'm not sure if she posts here regularly...I'm not even sure what her member name is. We had discussed when I was mulling the very same decision you're at now.

Part of what made me go full 2.5" and no resonators was that as far as I was aware, no one had done it with a sedan. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to take one for the team as it were. Anytime man, it's always fun to play a small part in people's purchase decisions. As much fun as it is, I get to live vicariously (again) through this purchase. Kinda fun.

Thank you for the kind words, sir!

≈ $1,400 vs $25,000....eh...





Just playin...I know how it goes man...happy wife = happy life.

Lol, if you take the myg37 forum as a whole and add up all of the dude's purchases vs all of the wives' purchases, Lego is helping to swing it back in our favor. I suppose I am too because, well not married, but have been there before and know how much of a balancing act that mod purchases can be.

 

Alright so this morning Alxmlr789 and I did a comparison of my exhaust (FI with 2.5" and 18" res) and his, ARK GRiP exhaust. We both have stock cats. Should of brought my camera to really tell the story right. The Ark tips are HUGE compared to FI. The FI looks very stock and the Ark is very aggressive looking. The Ark also sits very low compared to the FI, where it is tucked up high with it's oval mufflers.


They both sound GREAT first of all. The FI is a lot more tamed and deeper sounding. His is a bit louder, meaner, and more VQ sounding. I was surprised to hear how different the pitch was. They sound like completely different motors. Shifting in a manual (his) sounds a lot better than a autotragic (mine) shift. If I wasn't going headers/test pipes later on, I'd get the FI 12" or Ark. The 18" is a bit too quiet and tamed for my liking right now.


So once again. I'd recommend the FI 12" or ARK with more conservative tips.

 

Thanks, nishfish. For the last half year, I was quite solid that the next cat-back would be the ARK Grip. It's only since I got busy with the actual decision-making leading up to the purchase that I backed off, and settled on FI as the right choice for me... for many of the reasons you listed here.

This discussion thread, further research, and TwinSnail's videos, have all brought me to the point where I'm going to order the 18" resonators, matched up with the 2.5" pipes, custom-fit to the 2.25" outlet on my current FI RHFC. The FI tips are very nice, and will certainly be something to be happy with until (or if) I figure out something else. Point being, the FI design gives me slack in that area.

So that's the plan. The order goes in with Lance during Xmas, assuming the plan holds for another 6 weeks. Probably will.

I've very much appreciated all the comments, opinions, pics and videos. Thanks guys.


Yep. Something that looks OEM to the untrained eye, but better-than-OEM to people like you and me. Perfect.