AudiAudio30V

On my last 2.8 I had a milltek setup that I was pleased with but the fitment was poor. Now that I'm poor, I want to look at my alternatives to forking out the 800 for the milltek. Any negative things about Stebro? I would like to have the same mello tone as the Milltek.

BHase

There has been some negative feedback recently. If you search through the first two or three pages of this particular forum, you will find someone who posted a thread, I believe it is called "Stebro dilemma"...who was unhappy with his product. According to him, the exhaust wasn't a uniform size all the way through, and it wasn't mandrel bent either. The rest of us ordered our exhaust systems quite awhile before he ordered his, and it could be that Stebro's quality has gone down. Also, there is some discussion about their customer service. Though I personally have never had a problem in my interactions with the company, it seems that others have had customer service problems, including long waits in shipping.

However, I love my Stebro exhaust, and if you call them and order an exhaust, you could have them give you their assurances that the system will be a) uniform size and b) mandrel bent. If you are interested in pictures of the way it looks, I've got some posted below, or if you really want, I can also post a picture that shows a closer view of how the exhaust looks on the car.

Second, I've also got some sound clips, if you're interested. The sound clip is a bit skewed since my air intake does fairly take over in the high RPM range and I feel the engine has gotten louder since the installation of the Unorthodox Racing pulleys, but it should give you a general sense. Let me know; I believe the clip is about 3 MB and I can post it later today. You can also e-mail me if you want any other information.

One more thing about Stebro that I would like to note, about my personal experience: they didn't include any mounting equipment with my exhaust, so it took my shop an extra half hour to install my exhaust. No big deal, but it might be irritating if you choose to do the install yourself.

Ben

BHase

New Dimensions (http://www.ndimports.com) now sells a full system from a company called Jetex. The company is a bit newer, so I don't think anybody has tried out their product yet, but in the current issue of eurotuner (12/04), the Jetex system was the most powerful and the most priceworthy of ten systems tested for a GTI VR6. I believe the system is considerably cheaper, by a few hundred dollars, than many of the other systems (Stebro, Brullen, Milltek), so you may want to take a look at it.

Ben

CTA4AVANT

It has a nice tone to it and at WOT it sounds really nice. Some droning on the highway between 3,000-5,000 RPM. But overall a very nice system.

Fitment was pretty good. I watched my mechanic put it on (a lift really helps). They left it all loose and had a co-worker tweak it as he tightened it up. This helps so you can get the alignment just right. They let me stand behind the car and I told them how I wanted it to line up out the rear valence on my Avant.

The tips stick out about 2" on my Avant because the Avant is actually a bit shorter than the sedan.

Hope this helps.

2.8whine

Sorry, I was extremely unsatisfied by their product and customer service. Not mandrel bent, odd bulging throughout, crappy welds, tips werent clean (weld splatter on them), no hardware, etc etc..

2.8whine

Yeah.. buy it! I've been searching hopelessly to find someone that has it on a 2.8 A4 so I can hear it. Jetex isnt new actually and New Dimensions has carried it for a few years now.. Jetex is better known in the VW community and I've seen alot of companies in the UK sell their stuff. Supposedly becaust of the material used to make the exhaust it has a very mellow tone. check it out here

http://jetex.co.uk/Jetexwebsite/index2.html

poolemac (sold)

I'd love to hear some sound clips....

Gmann

99 2.8 Q 5spd
custom brullen exhaust w high flow maganaflow cats. (others like borla, stebro, milltek are hard to come by in toronto).

k&n intake (bout to upgrade to a cda)

more mods next summer!

Brullen offers a deep tone with "not too loud" sound providing you put a resonator on. I had mine w/ out a rese for a bit and it sounded like a muscle car or a mustang. All in all good compression at low rpm'z and just enough back pressure to eliminate that annoying back fire after u lift off the throttle.

IllWil

if I remember took all of 20 minutes to swap out with the other guys 2.8.

BHase

These sound clips are preliminary (I will have better ones at a later time). They are also in .MOV format, but for those of you who want nothing to do with Apple QuickTime, I will eventually (read in the next month) convert them to .AVI format, though with this type of audio output it will definitely lose quality. Since its the audio here that is important, I recommend you take the several minutes to download Apple Quicktime from the link on my site. Unfortunately, the "lite" versions of that program don't exist anymore on that page, and you have to download the 20.7 MB iTunes add-on as well, if you use Win2000 or WinXP. Go figure.

Otherwise, have fun! The bandwidth on the server seems pretty good, and I and others with average DSL connections were downloading at ~30 kbps.

Enjoy, and there is more to come later. Much more.

Ben<ul><li><a href="http://www.benhase.com">http://www.benhase.com</a</li></ul>