legacycentral bbs

So there's a new exhaust shop in town, they've got some pretty good deals being that they're new and trying to attract customers like me.

Here's the question;

for $200.00 I can have the shop delete the resonator (a few feet down from the cat.) and install 2 and a quater inch aluminized piping from the resonator flange back, and ending with a twin twip stainless steel AP muffler.

Is this a good idea?

Let me know what you think.

sure why not?? I have a turbo and have 3 inche straight exhaust all the way bak to only a trhush muffler. Sounds great and still passes an etest.


Sounds like a good deal to. Usually will have to pay at least $100 for any sort of "good" muffler

I wonder how much it's going to cost me to have them bend 3" exhaust from my 3" downpipe back to my 3" muffler and put my 3" resonator in between somewhere.

Do they have stainless at the exhaust shops? Is that a hell of a lot more money? I also need them to put an O2 bung that I already have in my down pipe.

Why even have a resonator, this is my question.

Other then noise dampening, I imagine removing the resonator would in the end only create better flow.

And an entirely stainless ehaust system would be incredibly expensive, and in the end would reach temperatures that would just burn the stainless coating off.

Check to see if the shop you're looking at has a madrel-bender, this is the syle of pipe bending that is free of crinkling the bends-
which speaks for itself as far as performance is concerned.

kimokalihi wrote:I wonder how much it's going to cost me to have them bend 3" exhaust from my 3" downpipe back to my 3" muffler and put my 3" resonator in between somewhere.

Do they have stainless at the exhaust shops? Is that a hell of a lot more money? I also need them to put an O2 bung that I already have in my down pipe.

Buy whatever exhaust pieces you need from E-bay, specifically, ones designed for a WRX. Most of them are stainless and inexpensive, plus it's nearly bolt-on. You need to extend the midpipe by a few inches, but that's easy.

I also had an exhaust shop install an O2 bung for my wideband, cost my $20 for the part and labor.

I thought about the WRX exhaust route as I have seen a lot of people on here do it but does it fit well? I wanted to go custom exhaust because that way they could bend it to fit up under the car with maximum clearance. I don't want it hitting anything.

I've seen a lot of wrx exhausts and they don't seem to tuck up under that well.

I'll check them out on ebay.

All I need bent from the exhaust shop is from the downpipe to the resonator and from the resonator to the muffler. Already have everything else but the pipe.

I also didn't want a huge fart can sticking out the back of my legacy.

Paint it black to help hide it or get a different axle back.

Resonator isn't going to restrict flow much at all.

The resonator helps the highway drone and gives the sound a deeper note.

Well damn 777,

so you're telling me removing the resonator will raise the tone of the exhaust?

That's not what I'm looking for, as a Subie enthusiast I want that deep, motor-boat like sound.

However, no matter the sound I still think I want the resonator off. Maybe it'd make the sound of my Subaru stand out, people might be like "did you hear that Legacy?"

What's the usual pipe diameter people fit to their first-gen n/a Legacys, I was going with 2 and a quarter inch.

I originally installed a 3" TBE with no cat, resonator and a big muffler. It was a nice change how loud / rumbly the exhaust was -- got a lot of head turns coming from a wagon. After a few months, the drone inside the cabin got annoying -- couldn't carry on a conversation, talk on the phone, etc. Had a resonator installed, which dramatically helped with all of that. It took away some of the higher / raspyness of the exhaust too.

Yes....as BSOD2600 mentioned, the resonator helps remove some of the higher noise/raspiness and the droning exhaust sound.

I'll second both those... I could not stand my original 3" strait pipe setup, it was so loud I was setting off car alarms at 3000 rpm. After I added a glass pack in the center it was tolerable. All the raspyness was removed by the glass pack and the exhaust note was quite deep. After a while even that started getting annoying (maybe because of age?), so I put a high flow 3" port muffler on, and now it has a nice rumbly note - nothing on the high end.

I've currently got a 3" catless DP with O2 and Wideband on top, and a length-modified OEM STi mid with the resonator and a hanger-modified OEM STi axle-back.

It is stealthy, but sounds awesome.

The long-term plan is to find a 3" twin-tip like a Borla Hush catback and put that on. Although I'm not in a hurry, as the current setup is pretty nice.

That's all such great information.

About that higher note though, how high are we talking here?

And when people say raspy, we're not talking about tuned Skyline motors I realize that, but isn't raspy sometimes a good thing, as far as aggressiveness goes at least.

I feel like I should try the exhaust without the resonator, and if I don't like it, I could simply chop some piping and re-install it later.

I'm hoping one muffler is enough... But we'll just have to see.