Made From Toasters

Bit of backstory. The BRZ came with a very wimpy looking cat back from the factory.

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Bit ole holes for a proper sized exhaust, but stuck with a set of tiny ones.  I wanted an exhaust bad. The stock one sounded stock, very quiet, not very sporty. No start up bark, and no growl under load. Given that I like to build my cars the I figure the factory would, I wanted to get the TRD exhaust. On YouTube, the drive by and in car videos sounded great. A nice sporty sounding exhaust that wasn't too loud and everyone claimed had no drone. Plus I'll save like 5 lbs of weight. Win for everyone.

So I managed to source a used TRD exhaust online off of FT86club.com.

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Takes about an hour or so to install. Word of the wise, either have some soapy water in a spray bottle or WD-40 to lube up the rubber hangers, else you'll be in a world of hurt.

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Looks shiny too. However there was a catch.

It was loud. And not "Oh, that's a good aggressive loud" or "That's a proper noise." No, this was just straight up, plug you ears, bloody hell, kinda of loud. And the drone. Terrible, terrible drone.

It didn't sound sporty at all. Literally it just felt that I added a noisemaker to my trunk. It sounded mean on a cold start, but from 0-4000 RPM it was just LOUD. After 4000 RPM it'd go dead silent. Yet, at highway cruse you'd get just this hint of a drone in the 65 MPHish range. Pushing past ticket issuing speeds would make it go away, but I'm not looking for a speeding ticket.

The internet's can't be wrong here. It factory fitment and everything. I double checked my install looking for leaks, or blown gaskets. Nothing. Everything is nicely sealed up. Nothing venting where it shouldn't. The thing is just bloody loud.

So I pulled it off and went back to stock in that same afternoon. Given the amount of highway driving I do, highway drone is a no go for me. I could have added sound deadening to the car, but given that cat backs aren't known for adding power to the FA20, nor was there crazy weight savings, it didn't make sense to keep it.

Sold it in the next week or so to some high schoolers. Invidia Q3000 is supposed to be much quieter, so I may give that a shot.

 

 

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