stauber32

Hey guys,
I know everyone always say straight pipes are loud and dont sound good. Well last night i drove my friends 06 mustang gt (auto [boo]), but the sound was INSANELY loud. Now ever since i was a kid i wanted my car to be that loud. I know i have a v6 and cant be that loud but i was wondering if the slp loudmouths would make my car loud yet dont sound "crappy".

I currently have stock headers and cats with flowmaster 40s true dual with fab'd hpipe. Flows are not loud to me AT ALL. Everyone has flows or magnaflows. Anyways im wondering if loudmouths will be louder than straightpipes or the same with better tone?

NYstang

Straight through styles sound like**** on these cars. Need achambered muffler.

Try an offH pipe, or get some longtubes- with my LT's O/R H and MAC mufflers, its louder then my 97 GT

Daehawk

You hear my setup in the sig. Its the same as NY's there...MAC Longtubes MAC O'R H-pipe, MAC True duals...no CATS.

Ironhandx

My v6 sounds badass when the revs go past 3k but its still quiet below that so that its driveable in regular traffic without pissing anyone off or having the cops called out on you for noise.

BBK Shorty Headers, Pypes H Pipe, high-flow cats, Flowmaster Force IIs.

With the Flowmaster American Thunder catbacks you could get it louder and still be quiet-ish on the low RPMs.

I mean, being loud only really matters when you crank it up and flatten someone that thinks they're king **** sitting in a GT or a souped up civic or something


Edit: Just noticed the bit about stock headers and cats.... Thats really your problem. Cats kill half the sound before it gets anywhere. Replace your headers with some long tubes or shorty's. Contrary to popular belief it doesn't actually matter which, and shorty's won't have fitment issues or end up driving your exhaust down too far on a lowered car. then either A) get rid of the cats or B) replace with high-flow cats(which amounts to the same thing). I don't think arizona has E-Testing yet but I could be wrong, so either one should be fine. What they probably DO have is that you're not allowed to remove anything that was put on the car to reduce emissions, but the high-flow cats will let you get around that law.

The only the long tubes WILL do for you is smooth out the sound a bit on a setup with loudmouths and make it sound a little less garbage.

For the love of god though, don't put loudmouths on it without changing the headers and cats and trying that first first. If you really want your car to be loud and sound like crap then go ahead but I warned you!

stauber32

@ironhandx so i am running on a small budget here and cannot afford to get longtubes. So i believe on the 2000 v6 there are 4 cats? do i replace all 4? remove 2? and which cats are going to be the loudest for what i am looking for?
Thanks

stauber32

and btw, i wish it was loud before 3k rpms.. I am one of those people that wants it as loud as possible, not too caring for others haha

Ironhandx

Two cats. They should be just AFTER your H-Pipe but if you have a custom fabbed one then I don't know.... If they're before the custom H-Pipe thats causing all sorts of problems with your sound. Cut them out, replace with straight pipe. Check your local laws to make sure you won't get raped on the inspection if one is required at some point. If no inspection is required and you can do the work yourself then you're just risking a cop looking under it to see if the cats are still in place if you're a bit too loud.

Make sure that fab'd H-Pipe is 2.5" the whole way through too. That won't help if you're running less than 2.5" somewhere. I've seen some go down as far as 1.5" because thats what some idiot had lying around. If you're going to cheap out a little at least make sure its 2.5".

I'd also highly suggest the shorty's/long tube upgrade. They get the exhaust ports coming out of the engine up to 1 5/8" vs the stock thats something around 1 3/8". It makes a difference to car performance and sound, especially if you have a cold air intake installed. Installing a CAI and fixing your exhaust together can add 30+ hp in my personal experience.

The 3.8L was always a bit of a bastard child at ford and they never put much thought into its performance, its pretty capped on the exhaust. They say they did it for fuel economy reasons but you'll lose 1 mpg at MOST. If you're running supreme you'll lose even less.

If your local laws require cats, install these:

http://www.americanmuscle.com/slp-ce...converter.html

They look closer to the stock cats than the Pypes variant and as a bonus are currently $10 cheaper.

Either way you're looking at money, but to replace both headers and cats would cost less than buying a new set of SLP loudmouths, including labour cost, and you'll probably get the same net sound increase, and a performance boost to boot.

stauber32

Awesome info. But i thought that a stock mustang v6 had 4 cats? And i believe i have 2.5 pipes all the way around. I do have the fab'd hpipe with flow 40s on there. But my cats are definitely behind the hpipe.

So its headers->cats->hpipe->40s->tips

I have pics on here but i dont know how to upload them and show you, but i do believe there are 4 cats on my car. I just went ahead and confirmed that the Hpipe is after the cats

Ironhandx

The H-Pipe should be before the cats. Thats causing some issues with your throaty sound. The only reason you would have 4 cats is because you installed a catback system that had cats already in it after you did the custom fab'd h-pipe that didn't remove the existing cats like it should. It should be Headers -> H-Pipe -> -> cats -> mufflers -> tips.

Also there should only ever be 2 cats. If this is a common setup around you, someones been doing a lot of custom H-Pipe fab and doing it VERY wrong.

BabyGT

New edge has 4 cats factory. And the exhaust setup should ALWAYS be headers/manifold, cats, x/h/y pipe, muffler/or no muffler, tips. In that order from engine back.