Hey there,
As some of you know, my cat converter needed replacement and I used the moment to replace it with a higher flowing unit.
I went to Hi-Tech exhausts in Darlinghurst Sydney, as I decided against spending all the money on a known Peugeot exhaust kit from a Sydney based specialist. I simply do not have the money, and reckoned I could achieve greater bang for buck with intelligent upgrades.
Firstly, Hi-Tech muffler's customer service is simply astonishing. They were really helpful, and did not try to sell everything under the sun to me.
We had it up on the hoist, and Lambros (the owner) was commenting that it was an excellent factory system with not a press bend in site, with the 2" pipe diameter being reasonable in size.
It was interesting when he pointed out the header-downpipe. He told me he manufactures the downpipe for the other well known exhaust kit I refer to, and although they look the part, in the scheme of things they don't offer a great percentage of the total benefit.
He said bang for buck, the best thing I can do is get rid of the OE tri-flow muffler and cat converter.
So, off with old and on with the new!
They did great welds - nice and smooth and no dags to be seen, and put on a 2.25" straight through muffler on the back. The cat convertor is slightly larger than the original.
The new exhaust tip looks close to factory (the same one used in the other exhaust kit, incidentally, and the polished mufflers Hi-Tech build in their factories look indentical too).
Results?
The exhaust tone is raspy. Apparently this will dull out a bit once it's got a coating of carbon in there.
Likewise the cabin noise is noticably louder, in fact I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble with my fiance once she gets in the car...
Hopefully the noise will dissipate to a certain degree, else I get them to take off the straight through and put on a good high flowing tri flow.
The low end power delivery is smoother than before, and mid range response is noticeably better. It revs out more freely too.
Although the performance increase was more noticeable than I anticipated, it is a bit loud.
I'll keep you updated with what happens.
As some of you know, my cat converter needed replacement and I used the moment to replace it with a higher flowing unit.
I went to Hi-Tech exhausts in Darlinghurst Sydney, as I decided against spending all the money on a known Peugeot exhaust kit from a Sydney based specialist. I simply do not have the money, and reckoned I could achieve greater bang for buck with intelligent upgrades.
Firstly, Hi-Tech muffler's customer service is simply astonishing. They were really helpful, and did not try to sell everything under the sun to me.
We had it up on the hoist, and Lambros (the owner) was commenting that it was an excellent factory system with not a press bend in site, with the 2" pipe diameter being reasonable in size.
It was interesting when he pointed out the header-downpipe. He told me he manufactures the downpipe for the other well known exhaust kit I refer to, and although they look the part, in the scheme of things they don't offer a great percentage of the total benefit.
He said bang for buck, the best thing I can do is get rid of the OE tri-flow muffler and cat converter.
So, off with old and on with the new!
They did great welds - nice and smooth and no dags to be seen, and put on a 2.25" straight through muffler on the back. The cat convertor is slightly larger than the original.
The new exhaust tip looks close to factory (the same one used in the other exhaust kit, incidentally, and the polished mufflers Hi-Tech build in their factories look indentical too).
Results?
The exhaust tone is raspy. Apparently this will dull out a bit once it's got a coating of carbon in there.
Likewise the cabin noise is noticably louder, in fact I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble with my fiance once she gets in the car...
Hopefully the noise will dissipate to a certain degree, else I get them to take off the straight through and put on a good high flowing tri flow.
The low end power delivery is smoother than before, and mid range response is noticeably better. It revs out more freely too.
Although the performance increase was more noticeable than I anticipated, it is a bit loud.
I'll keep you updated with what happens.