After several hours of deliberations, I finally settled on an exhaust system.
While the price of Magnaflow was awfully tempting, several of the “quality” posts had me a little concerned, so I opted to go a different route.
I thought I had it narrowed down to Corsa (Jim Browning Jr. is terrific to deal with by the way—I would recommend him to anyone in a heartbeat) and Borla (sales rep here was great—nothing but praise from me here as well), but, at the last moment, I was introduced to a California based high-performance exhaust company (Zoomers, found at http://zoomersexhaust.com/) looking to expand its product offerings into the CTS-V market.
After my initial chat with one of the owners, it became clear that this was an exciting opportunity to get involved with, so I went this route.
My initial thoughts of the exhaust:
Hope you find this interesting!
While the price of Magnaflow was awfully tempting, several of the “quality” posts had me a little concerned, so I opted to go a different route.
I thought I had it narrowed down to Corsa (Jim Browning Jr. is terrific to deal with by the way—I would recommend him to anyone in a heartbeat) and Borla (sales rep here was great—nothing but praise from me here as well), but, at the last moment, I was introduced to a California based high-performance exhaust company (Zoomers, found at http://zoomersexhaust.com/) looking to expand its product offerings into the CTS-V market.
After my initial chat with one of the owners, it became clear that this was an exciting opportunity to get involved with, so I went this route.
My initial thoughts of the exhaust:
- SOUND: While I haven’t set up a sound file yet, I can definitely say that the sound is deep and throaty. You’ll never forget you are driving a muscle car with this exhaust. Inside the cabin (windows up), you’ll find that the exhaust is rather quiet, especially cruising on the freeway. At idle/low RPM it’s a little louder, but nothing too egregious at all. There is essentially no popping with this exhaust either; it’s smooth as ice. On a rare occasion, I can induce like one or so, but it’s definitely nothing that would cause anyone concern. As compared to Corsa, it appears to be (in my opinion) a few decibels lower. If you are looking for more “loud,” B&B/Corsa/Magna might be more your meal-ticket. If you are looking for a more “refined” muscle-car sound, I’d start here and move forward.
- CABIN RESONANCE: For those of you who are interested in cabin resonance, or the lack thereof, I can say with certainty that my car has none; nada; nothing. Not a hint, even subsequent to lugging the crap out of the motor. I thought I was going to be able to squeak a little bit out of it at about ~1,500 RPM in 6th gear, but wasn’t able to produce it. Further, drone has seemingly been minimized as well. Substantially all you get is the exhaust melody, nothing more, nothing less.
- QUALITY: All stainless steel (T-304). A definite “solid” feeling system. I was particularly pleased with how “high and tight” the exhaust fit on the car.
- PERFORMANCE: Unfortunately, I was not able to produce dyno numbers both before and after based solely on the exhaust. My car was “eddy current” dyno tuned almost immediately after the exhaust was installed and I wasn’t particularly fond of paying for such tune two separate times (and tuning in such a manner takes a long time). All I can say is that I got approximately 40 more lb feet out of torque from changing to the “correct” pulley (3.0 to 2.8), a Volant CAI and the aforementioned exhaust. Interpret as you wish.
Hope you find this interesting!