This week I’ve been sick, so I’m keeping away from my roommates by staying locked in our apartment’s living room and sleeping on the couch by the window. This means I get to hear each and every vehicle driving down my street, and it’s taught me a lesson: Many of you are buying just the most garbage exhausts available. They’re terrible, they sound like trash, and I want you all to stop. Please, buy good exhausts instead.
The thing with aftermarket exhausts is that “loud” is relatively cheap and easy. Add pipe diameter, remove cats, shrink mufflers, and you’re golden — you have an exhaust that’s freer-flowing and louder. Making an exhaust that sounds good, however, is much more of an art form. It’s a complex process involving resonators, headers, even your exhaust tips affect the resulting tone. This is the stuff you miss out on with cheap eBay crap, and it’s why your exhausts have been annoying me all week.
Stop buying cheap crap
This has been pretty car-based so far, but don’t think motorcycles are exempt. That ZX4-RR I rode the other day, with the exhaust drone at 4,000 RPM that felt like it would’ve cooked my brain without earplugs, is subject to this rant as well. Just because an exhaust is louder, just because it’s freer-flowing, doesn’t mean it actually sounds good. It may make more power, once you tune the ECU to accommodate for the lack of restriction, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that cheap can is an upgrade everywhere.
The worst offenders for cheap, bad exhausts around me seem to be VQ-engined Infinitis and F80-era 3 Series, but no make or model is safe from the onslaught of cheap exhausts built without care for the sound they produce. Please, I’m begging you all, invest in exhausts from companies that actually take the time to consider the sound their pipes will produce. You will, very literally, help me sleep at night.
