Full 3" SS exhaust!

[bmoha2]

I had been running a Buschur racing 2.5 inch SS downpipe with a SS hi flo cat and 3 inch thermal research exhaust for the last 8 years or so. I loved the sound of it but I was yearning for a little better response from the FP Big T28. I kept seeing the ad on here for the Punishment racing 3" 304 SS downpipe and decided to go for it. At that price? $115? Hard to go wrong. I wanted to eliminate the cat so it was perfect.
Just for shits and giggles I dropped the cat and exhaust off and drove around a bit with just the Buschur racing dp. Holy s*** was that loud!!! But it really seemed to do well by the seat of the pants dyno.
I had bought the Thermal Research downpipe 8 years ago when it used mild steel for the flanges. Overall it looked good, the stainless tubing and the stainless hangers were holding up really good. If I spent the time and elbow grease I think I could make it look almost brand new again! Not so with the mild steel flanges. Those had to go. I ordered a SS 3" flange and 18 inches of 3" 304 SS tubing to replace the neck down section of the Thermal Research exhaust.
I couldn't say the same for the SS hi flo cat. What a waste of $150! It looked like crap. It looked more like mild steel than SS! It had not aged well at all. Both the heat shields top and bottom had rusted and fallen off.
I cut the thermal exhaust on both sides of the rear flanges and MIGed in a section of the new 3" SS tubing to make up fro the lost length. About an inch and a quarter in all.
Then I installed the Punishment racing dp. I was really impressed with the fit finish and quality of the part! An almost show quality finish and excellent fitment. Punishment utilizes a couple of indents on the tubing at the front flange for clearance for the bolts. The Punishment dp is 3 inch all the way from the flange unlike a lot of others I have seen. The bolt holes at the front flange are slotted and it would be easy to bolt this dp up to either a 2.5 inch o2 sensor housing or even 3 inch! Neat! Their welds were beautiful as well! Robotic I think! Flawless!
I had about 13 inches of empty space to fill in between the flange at the end of the dp and the front of the Thermal exhaust. We mocked everything up into place and I made some marks and pretty much just used dead reckoning to figure where and at what angle to cut the ss tubing for the flange. Tacked it into place and then we dropped it all to weld it up. We MIGed it with SS wire. The welds were not pretty but they seem airtight as I can't at this point hear any leaks.
Oddly enough...It is quieter with the 3 inch dp and full 3" exhaust than it was with the 2.5 inch dp and hi flo cat. I'd say it is barely louder than stock but you can feel it flows a lot better than the 2.5 system.
I love the sound. It's almost too quiet but kinda sneaky, a bit stealthy. I used all SS hardware all the way thru with all metal gaskets instead of those crappy rubber paper gaskets. I got into the go pedal while taking off from a stoplight, enough to cause the atmospheric dump wastegate to open, just to see a cop sitting directly across from me. I got off the skinny pedal and saw the cop pull out. I was like damn... But then since my car was being so quiet the cop got right on the rear bumper of the Volkswagon Golf next to me and kinda looked mystified.
I spent 28 bucks for the 3/8ths inch thick 3 inch 304 SS flange and $27 for the 18 inches of 3" SS 304 tubing. It also cost $27 for a reel of 30 ga SS wire for the MIG welder.

 

[bmoha2]

The exwife split end of jan and took digital camera.

 

[pboglio]

Interesting. I'm about to install my 3" Megan downpipe and have to do some custom welding to fit it to my Thermal exhaust. I hate these damned DSM exhaust neckdowns. For once I want a downpipe and catback to actually fit. Curious to see your results of the 2.5" downpipe vs. 3" downipe.

 

[bmoha2]

There is no clearance between the 3 inch dp and the hard steel oil feed line that feeds the FP BigT28. The DP sits right on it. I don't like that. I am going to order the FP stainless steel braided oil feed line for the BigT28 and eliminate that problem. Route it just a bit differently.
The car feels great!!! Great turbo response, it is definitively revving faster than it did before and spool up is instantaneous. It always was fast with the fully ported FP BigT28 but it's hella fast now.

 

[byebyev8]

I'm actually also doing the same thing. But I'm installing a custom 3inch 02 eliminator 3in downpipe. Before i had a pr 2.5in downpipe with 3in cat. Kinda sucks because the 02 housing hits my ic piping now. Plus the catback doesn't want to really line up with the downpipe. Kinda crazy but my thermal exhaust doesn't tapper down anywhere. Kinda makes me wounder if they didn't make all of them to tapper down. I bought it from a local parts shop years ago so i wounder if its something they fabbed up and put the thermal muffler on. Its full 3in stainless with stainless 3bolt flanges also.

I've been running open downpipe the last few days and its annoying imo it reminds me of my 02dump that i hated. I didn't notice a power increase either

 

[bmoha2]

Cool. I am seeing less and less AWD DSMs around here. In recent years Thermal changed over to full stainless including the flanges so it probably is still a legit one. Originally when they started making them the only offering was 3 inch with 2.5 neckdown. They didn't have a full 3 inch without the neckdown but I was told that had changed. I am not sure when that happened. I wish mine had been 3 inch all the way. Even so... even if it had been full 3 inch and flanged it still wouldn't have bolted right up to the Punishment racing 3 inch cat eliminator dp I have. There is a slight angle to the flange at the end of the Punishment dp that doesn't match the angle on the front of the Thermal catback exhaust. Maybe a difference of 10 degrees? hard to tell

 

[DSMunknown]

Interesting. I'm about to install my 3" Megan downpipe and have to do some custom welding to fit it to my Thermal exhaust. I hate these damned DSM exhaust neckdowns. For once I want a downpipe and catback to actually fit.

About a year before I actually bought my Thermal, I sent them multiple emails about the neckdown, and how most of their customers have no need for the ability to bolt the pipe on to OEM catalytic converters, and thus have them cut off anyways. Never recieved a reply.

 

[bmoha2]

I was not expecting it to be this quiet. I might have to add a ss glasspack. When I was just running it around town with just the 2.5 Buschur racing dp on it was insanely loud. Painfully so. But I ran it around for a couple of days with the Punishment racing 3 inch dp and it was nowhere near as abusively loud. In fact it was pretty tolerable. If it weren't for possibly getting too much attention from police I might have just added a 45 degree angle on it and call it a day. In fact I did leave the flange on the end of it specifically so I could fab up a 45 degree to it and drop the rest of the exhaust. Something I could do easily at the track.
I had talked to a rep from Thermal on the phone probably 8 years ago when I first bought it. She was a bit snobby.

 

[bmoha2]

I got under the Talon tonight to install the new ss braided oil feed line and noticed that the new Punishment racing 3 inch downpipe I installed is in contact with the oil pan. I thought I had heard something rattling. I'm running a DNP SS tubular exhaust manifold and a Variant ss tubular O2 sensor housing so it's not Punishments fault. Things were likely to be a little wonky. 3 inch downpipes that are 3 inches all the way from the O2 sensor housing seem like a pita for fitment. I think all I am going to do is order another 304 ss 3/8 inch flange and sandwich an additional flange in there. One gasket on each side of it. Should give me another 3/8ths of an inch to play with and should fit just fine afterwards.
I guess I could also cut the downpipe and weld in a 3/8ths inch section in as well but I don't know how well that will work out.