oh yeah, forgot to tell you guys. Had my exhaust checked at the state ref's office for loudness. Popped my silencers in before the test, ended up with 94.6db at 5 or so thousand revs, loud but, believe it or not, legal. If the silencers were out, id bet that it would get over a 100db. It is so loud without the silencers, but sounds good, and thats how I like it. Anyways, with a test pipe I think it will be way to loud.
Anthony

 

all i have to say is i put a test pipe on my gsr and it made it way too crappy loud and it smells really bad in and around the car and in a s2k with the top down it would be horrible

 

I hear a lot of people say that, but I've never had that problem. Mine has a smell sometimes, but it isn't the "rotten egg" smell that some people describe. It just smells like burning oil/fuel/other. Definitely not unbearable. The sound is definitely more of a nuisance than the smell.

 

Im lookin to get a test pipe and a direct port kit installed in feb. Are u sayin I'm gonna have flames shootin out the back? BTW I also have the invidia.

 

Has anyone just had a local shop fab up a test-pipe rather than buying these over priced ones? Maybe its just me, but $100+ for a short section of pipe and 2 flanges is ridiculous.

 

^ the flanges are slightly offset. By the time you get flanges and a piece of pipe bent correctly, gaskets and bolts, and then realize it still doesn't fit and makes your exhaust melt your bumper, you'll wish you spent the extra and had gotten a $100 T1R pipe that fits perfectly.

 

Yeah I see the pipe is slightly bent/offset now, I was just looking at pictures of the T1R kit. Does anyone have a picture of the stock cat they could post up? Either out of the car or under, but I just want to see if it would be possible to cut out just the canister and replace it with a piece of pipe (retain stock bend and flanges in other words). I should stop monkeying around and Just buy the T1R, but show me pics anyway!

 

Have you ever looked through a cat converter? The few that I have looked through don't even let sun light through them. They are a honeycomb straight through. Very good for reducing sound waves in the exhaust (and hp). Replace it with a straight pipe and things are going to get loud.

 

Addressing several questions here.

Not going to comment on gains. Not into sado-masachism tonight.

I have the Fuji exhaust and a T1R test pipe. But then, I also have a supercharger, so my rendition of sound and performance is not entirely applicable here. In the lower rpm range, sound is deeper from inside the cabin and only slightly louder than without the testpipe. At "full zoot", it really opens up and is much louder than without. Consider that most aftermarket "dual" exhaust still has 3 cannisters for noise control. A cat is not a real good muffler to begin with, so replacing it with a test pipe when you have 3 other mufflers makes less difference than if you had a system with only 2 other (or 1 other) mufflers.

The stock catalytic converter is already a high flow one. Why would anyone want to get rid of it, spend 200 bucks for one that does the same thing?

It's a hollow tube with a bung in it for the O2 sensor! If you want to spend 200 bucks for a hollow tube as opposed to 100 bucks or even 50 bucks, then go ahead.

The available commercially made test pipes have the required flanges on them and they are at the correct angles for direct bolt on. They even come with a gasket. Why would anyone want to cut the crap out of the rest of their system to weld on a muffler shop hack job?

With a "store bought" test pipe, this is a fairly easy DIY job.

 

If you take a cat apart, you'll see that the "honeycomb" is not all the way through. They are in sections of about an inch or so thick and there will be many, many sections spaced about an inch or two apart. The reason sunlight doesn't shine through from one end of a cat to the other is because these sections don't line up exactly perfect with each other. If you were to look through only one of these sections, you would see light. Of course, a low flow cat will also be different from the high flow type that is OEM on our cars. Since our cats entry hole is not lined up directly with the exit hole, you won't see light.
Having replaced mine with a test pipe, I can attest to the sound (see my previous post). It's only much louder in the higher rpm range under WOT and this is with an aftermarket exhaust. With the OEM exhaust, I think the difference will be much less.
We have one of the highest flowing cats around, including any aftermarket ones.