I received some kinetix resonated test pipes on Monday the 18th. I tried to put them on two days later. After a few hours, I got everything taken care of except for one bloody nut. I tried again Thursday evening, and no luck. Friday I took it to an exhaust shop, and after 2 hours($150 labor), they gave up.

This past Wednesday I took it to another local guy; he welded a nut onto the nut I couldn't break loose, and backed it out. It turns out that the threads on the stud were screwed, and not due to cross-threading. The threads had a couple of vertical cuts through them extending the length of the stud. So he backed ou the stud, rethreaded it, put it back in, and topped it with a new nut. Cost me 1 hour of labor at $50.

I took the car home that night and started the install. Got everything off, and put the test pipes back on. I used new gaskets between the pipes and the xpipe, and the pipes and the exhaust manifolds. I ran into another problem: two bolts I planned on reusing from my cats were actually welded into the cats. So I just installed the pipes with a missing bolt per exhaust manifold.

I took it for a test drive, and I really loved the sound. It was a bit louder than my cats, but not nearly what I had expected. The tones changed a bit as well. And underneath the new exhaust sound was the sound of an exhaust leak(remember the missing bolts?).

I tracked down some replacement bolts today. I remove the driver's side pipe and remounted it. I examined the gasket and could see where the leak was exiting. After I got everthing back together, I went out for another drive. I gotta say, I am very impressed.

First, it's quieter now(understandibly so) that I have no exhaust leak. But under no load, and even under say a 20% load, it's actually quieter than my cats, believe it or not. The droning has been minimized as well. It's still there, but it's quieter, and the tone is not nearly as offensive. Cheryl was very skeptical of my getting the pipes; after some driving tonight, she is pleasantly surprised.

And though they are actually quieter than the cats in most driving scenarios; get on it, and the car sounds mean as hell. There is some rasp, but like the volume, it's not as much as I was expecting.

Perfomance: only butt-dyno observations so far. I'm going to get another dyno, and go to the track, but those are at some undetermined point in the future. If any one reading this recalls my reviews of my other mods, I really never noticed much of a seat-of-the-pants difference. I didn't notice anything with the mrev, the cats, or even the exhaust(which is surpising, since many equate noise with speed). I did notice a little bit up near redline with the stillen airbox, but nothing concrete. The test pipes on the other hand have really awoken the car.

When the car was stock(before all the mod-induced NVH), it pulled smoothly to redline and never hiccupped. After all my mods(prior to the test pipes), the car seems to vibrate and shimmy at redline to the point that it seemed as though the car's "personality" didn't like it up there, if that makes any sense at all. I'm not saying the car lost power up top, just that it didn't seem as ready to rev as before. The pipes have corrected that. Not only does it definitely pull harder after 4k, but it doesn't stop. And above 6k, some of the vibrations seems to have eased by a large margin. Who knows, maybe I just had some loose connections down there in the exhaust that were corrected with the install, but I doubt that; everything was a b!tch to break loose(even after swimming in liquid wrench for 18 hours).

Now for the videos: I've got one video that I took nearly a year ago of the car without the muffler; I had a 350z midpipe and crawford cats at the time. Here it is for reference:

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4668278624367539151&hl=en"> </embed>

Next is a video of the new configuration: stillen exhaust and the test pipes. I was driving around some back roads to hear the exhaust under load in the mid rpms. The passenger filmed, but the driver's window was down; hence some ambient noise.

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=138198718802818665&hl=en"> </embed>


Next is part two of that video; we paused the recording so I could have a quick discussion with my son
<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6452157325453901205&hl=en"> </embed>

And last is a quick WOT run away from the camera, with a small bit of wheelspin at the launch(accidental, of course ). You can hear me miss third, but I also short-shifted 3rd at 5k rpms and still chirped 4th
<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=3982113370550292352&hl=en"> </embed>

 

Glad you liked them! Sorry to hear about all the trouble you had to go through, cant wait to get my cats!

 

I've had mine for a while now and they're great!! Never had the problems you did on install or any at that matter, but they complimented nicely to the rest of my setup.

 

Yeppers. Sent those out yesterday and I have a tracking number for you. I'll have Trey PM it to you later today. Also, there were 2 nuts that weren't included in the box (on accident) and I put them in an cardboard envelope and mailed them. They went regular mail but they shouldn't take any longer than priority.


As for my take on the pipes I personally was NOT happy about the prospect of the change and had made it well known at my house. Well, I am quite pleased with the whole thing because the MOST annoying part of the sound previously is now GONE. If any of you who read the previous threads recall, I complained about a very small RPM range having a drone to drive you to drink - unfortunately it was at basically highway speed. Well, now it is gone. The car isn't any quieter (to me) but the tone has changed to something far less irritating and that alone is a good thing.

 

How's the exhaust smell now?

 

There's more of a fuel smell now than with the cats. I was expecting it. I didn't know if I would be able to tolerate the smell, and I was concerned about it. But frankly, just everything else, the reports of odors have been exaggerated.

I could imagine that if one were coming from a stock system directly to test pipes, that the difference would be much more drastic, but not from the crawford cats.

Let me put it this way. With the cats, I could tell when the ecu changed into "performance" maps. I could do 2 or 3 WOT runs, and every thing would be normal. Then I could do another 2 or 3, and then I could smell a large increase in fuel in the exhaust. This increase coincided with strong WOT pulls. Now, it smells like that whenever I push the car hard.

 

I can't believe you are running the Stillen Gen1 with the Kinetix Resonated. When I put the Kinetix on, the power increase was huge, but it was WAY too loud to be streetable. I had to replace the Stillen resonators with the 30" Magnaflow rounds to tone it down. Still got the power, but about 15dB quieter. Now you just need to get some headers on there and you will really feel the difference.

 

It's actually not too bad, volume wise. Cheryl won't like it, but I actually want more volume; though that may change after I get used to the new sound.

+1 on the headers, then a utec to pull it all together. But I damn sure am not putting the headers on myself, so that adds to the cost. Plus heat-wrapping them. More $$$. Then what do you do when you trade in the car? Leave the headers on? If not, that's more $$$.