Cheap Exhaust mod. Tell me what you think
 

I was going to get an exhaust for my 97' 2.8, but all the kits were about $700. There's this great custom exhaust place called Lou's Custom Exhaust near my house, so I took it there. They put it on the lift, and we decided to just cut off the rear muffler and leave the resonator to see how that sounded. It had a nice deep growl, so they just bent up a stainless steel pipe from the resonator, and welded on a stainless polished tip. Cost me $157 total, and I bet it has a better sound and more HP than the expesive kits. The only drawback is when I get off the throttle, it burbles like a big V8 because there are no baffles, but still it sounds soo sweet.

not bad, but you still have plenty of restricted air flow since you decided to leave
 

most of your heavy stock exhaust on and only replace the rear muffler. If you are attempting hp gains on your vehicle you might want to look into replacing the resonator as well with larger diameter piping.

Re: Then it would just be a straight pipe with no muffler or resonator...
 

Are you saying I should replace the resonator with a less restrictive one.

To be honest with you...
 

I am not sure you really gained any HP (you did probably gain a few). Remeber the aftermarket exhaust kits use larger piping, which reduces restriction. I went to a custom shop, too, but I had them run new piping (3") from the cat back.

Re: maybe your right.....
 

Still it only cost me 150 and they said They could build a cat back syst. for $400. At least it sounds badass. How do you like your 3in system, is the kick noticible?

Well first, you want to move up from the 2.0 inch stock tubing cat back...
 

you could easily have a custom exhaust made at any good exhaust shop, just have them mandrel bend some stainless...

One option would be to get the downpipe that one of the guys is offering here on AW, i believe SPP is selling these. Then have any old flowmaster/magnaflow muffler put onto the back of it.

Your gains will be acheived when you move from 2.0 to 2.25, or 2.5, or 2.75.

Right, you could always do further work to it later
 

Unless you plan on getting a big turbo kit, or a supercharger if you have a 2.8, 3" is probably excessive. I lost some low end torque, but I definately gained high end power. It is also pretty loud. If I had to do it again, I would probably get 2.5".

he has a 2.8 and the SPP downpipes will not work...
 

you should go custom from the manifold back. (downpipes, highflow cats and larger tubing) The power gain will be siginficant but it will sound louder too. here are some <A HREF="http://audi97.50megs.com/sound_exhaustm.html">clips</A> of my Brullen manifold back.