well when i got home from work today i grabed my 14mm wrench and went to town, sprayed the hangers with wd40 and took off the 4 bolts, slide it off the 3 hangers and Bam~! took maybe 8 mins. started it up and wow, sounds great!! kids next door said it sounded like a superbike at wot.

oo that bi#ch is heavy.. guessing 25ish pounds

Woot!

Isn't it a blast? I love how it sounds like that.
:driving:

I will probably try this this weekend when I am doing some other work on the car.

Dropped my muffler today (because of the rear JDM fog install) and drove around.. it's really loud.. but it sounds pretty nice when you get high into the rpms.. lots of droning at 40-45 mph.. haven't gotten up on the highway yet. Will do more driving without it on tomorrow.

loving it still lol. just went to a meet and most of the 350 guys where amazed at how good it sounded. also raced a mustang on the way out (which i beat with ease i must say) and man does the exhaust scream!!! hadn't redlined the car like that without the muffler.

We've all come to agreement that taking the rear section off of a stock exhaust sounds pretty darm good.

Just don't try it with a Stillen exhaust. It sounds like CRAAAAAAP!
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k3...nutt/003-1.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k3...nutt/001-1.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k3...nutt/002-1.jpg

The Stillen rear exhaust section weighs 36.2 lbs!

With the rear section removed, the sound is very raspy, similar to how a trombone amplifies the simple vibration of your lips..... the straight pipes (with resonators, headers and cats) amplify each exhaust pulse to make a cacaphony high pitch exhaust harmonics accentuated by a base line of BLAT, BLAT, BLAT!




It does pull a nice 3rd gear scratch though.




-Phim

Dam, I saw you out at the meet but I didnt get to hear it :thumbsdown:

Dude I think that onboard sounds awesome... like a f'ing race car man. Not that I'd ever run that on the street but dude, sounds VERY MAD.

Phimosis, I think you need to take into account that you're running HFCs. Point being, I don't think it'd have sounded as raspy if you had the Stillen cat-back hooked up to stock cats, and then removed the rear section. That being said, I don't think it sounded all that bad. :tup: Giving you some rep for doing this little experiment, btw.

did i meet you last night because i met a few new faces yesterday? if not you should have stopped by

Thanks!

I had an 84 Mustang with no cats. when I installed the headers I ran it around the neighborhood with open exhaust. Sounded like a dragster. Pretty cool. I had a '98 4V Mustang Cobra with Kenne Belle supercharger. Ran it with HFC's and open exhaust. Sounded really mean. Way too loud, but awesome sound. With Borla exhaust on it, it was sweet street ride. Point being, I've had experience with other cars with low backpressure exhaust and have it sound great.

I like the Stillen exhaust when it's all attached.... just a little quieter than what I like. I like a more racey sound. With that rear section off though, the sound is god awful. The camera microphone just doesnt quite catch how raspy and harsh the sound is. It's literally like someone is blowing a trombone right into you ears. It has so much BLAT, BLAT, BLAT that it reminds me of these guys that have 40's and 50's pickups with flat head V8's and 1.5" straight pipe coming from the headers with no Y pipe or H pipe to equal the pulses. I think a much racier sound can be found without the harsh acoustic qualities. One last thing is that there is no "cackle" on decel with the Stillen exhaust, but it does do it with the stock exhaust with rear section removed. It makes the stock exhaust with rear section removed very sexy sounding.

Nah bro, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to. Everytime I saw the z no one was by it, so I couldn't spot u. No biggie man, I'll catch ya at one of these meets. I'll try to be at the Sunday one if ur there.

It will help me make the decision on getting a z in a few months :tup:

Hmm . . . I get cackle on decel with mine (assuming we mean the same thing by cackle). The only real difference in our intake/exhaust setups is that I have the Berk HFCs and you have the Stillen. I wonder if that's making a difference. I had more cackle before putting the headers on though.

Sunday meet? Where?

I decided to remove the rear section of the muffler as well to see how the car sounded, stopped over at my buddies shop after work and I welded up a set of these to help direct the exhaust. Surprisingly the car sounds really great, zero rasp, very deep at idle and nice taper to a pretty tame upper rpm range. I am ordering up an exhaust tomorrow from a set of HFC and back. These will be available in private classified for anyone who wants to try them out.

Nick


Pictures are attached

when i quote your post i see you put a link to a pic but it's not showing in the actual thread...

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this but the 1st vid makes the 370z sound alot like a stock 350z. Slightly different but very similar, much more deep in tone.

I just did this muffler delete except i welded a pipe where the muffler goes. Sounds pretty good but i want to get rid of some of the drone or else ill put the stocker back on. Would resonators tame it out any????

def impressed by the sound from the muffler delete...sounds better than alot of full blown CB exhausts I have heard on this forum lol. Probably not much power to be had here but the weight savings + sound + $$$ makes for a decent DIY mod.

anyone thought of making turndowns bolted up right after the OEM cats? def pros and cons here

im using custom turndowns right where the muffler bolted on until i can afford real exhaust. right after cats would probably be crazy loud?

Um, yeah, I would think so, because you'd be removing the resonators.

I'm surprised there isn't an economical bolt-on kit that just deletes the muffler and maintains the exhaust tips for curb appeal. I'd buy it.

I don't fully understand the 'it's too loud and cops will ticket you' mentality. I have many ferarris, lambos, even an Audi RS4 in my neighborhood that are all damn loud and they are stock. I can't imagine that they get regularly ticketed for having too loud an exhaust. There are so few 370Zs in Chicago, I'd just tell the cop it's stock...what's the problem? No one would ticket me here is my guess.

I'm going to post this as a separate thread as I'm interested in the responses.

lol it sounds decent.

It's not about getting ticketed for noise, it's about the extra-loud exhaust attracting more cop attention to other aspects of your driving. When you can hear the exhaust from 1/2 a mile away, it makes a difference in how much attention you pick up from the fuzz.

I found a guy who will do exactly this for me on Saturday.

what are the socket sizes for the bolts on the muffler?

mmm, 14mm I think

im really bored tonight and decided to take the muffler off just to weigh it and see what it sounds like in person. im friends with the local exhaust shop so if i like the south i can have them fab me up a custom exhaust back to the bumper with the stock tips.

thanks Spear for the size.


jeeze those bolts are on there tight. im afraid im gonna strip one or break something lol.

Its the poormans answer to aftermarket exhaust system. It sounds alot better than I thought it would. If I was younger and poor I would be getting ready to unbolt mine for a while then fabricate some pipes back to the stock tips.:stirthepot:

well atm i cant get the bolts to budge. where is a dang breaker bar when you need one :P

when i did my muffler delete i just sawed past the muffler and welded the pipes on

Are you guys sure there is no gains at all? I recall people claiming 3-5 whp with an axel back exhaust?! Isn't this basically the same thing? Or am I totally nuts.

idk but i def felt like i lost HP with the muffler delete idk why

well i was able to get the bolts on the actually muffler to undo. but i cannot get a few of those brackets that are connected to the rubber gromets/frame to come undone.. and im not gonna saw anything since i dont even know if i will like the sound.

I thought that sounds pretty awesome. Probably too loud for the street, but it sounds pretty good. I gotta make one of those videos haha.

heh these cars are quiet compared to my 2001 TA. just curious if anyone ever weight there muffler setup. it def has some major weight to it.

Why fabricate new pipes when you can use your stock exhaust without any modifications? What I did was remove the gaskets and replace em with 3-4 washers. Your muffler will pretty much be detached. Ill post pics up whenever I can.

took me ~30 mins to do mine. i sprayed all the bolts and hangers/rubber mounts with WD-40 and everything came off flawless. since the initial vid i posted up in the 1st page i have gotten custom pipes/tips to finish it off. still waiting for an exhaust to make me want it.... big fan of Tanabe, waiting on them to see what route i will take.

heres my poor man's exhaust mod:
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9316/photo0008o.jpg

Sorry for the crappy pic. There is an internal flange so 3-4 washers should allow for the muffler to be fully detached, leaving about 3mm of space. The exhaust becomes loud at 2.5k-3k+ rpms and there is no drone except for when im cruisin at 70mph, but the drone goes away when im going faster than 70mph.

just go all the way and get rid of everything.

including the headers.

I want to know how the car sounds then