My daily driver is a 98 neon with a Hahn turbo kit, no cat and a vibrant dual tip muffler. Still has the stock 2.25" pipe. It is just slightly louder then stock. I bought the car with this exhaust, and have been driving it for a year like this. In the past month I have been pulled over twice for exhaust violations. I live in WA state and the law here is that it is illegal to modify the exhaust on a car in any way that is less the 25 years old. No decibel rating or anything like that. I personally think it is a ridiculous law because it has proved to be next to impossible to get a stock muffler for my car that is only 15 years old. If it was 25 years only who knows what you would have to do. I explained that to the officer yesterday and his solution was to take it to a muffler shop and have a "stock type" muffler put on it. But even that isnt technically legal, and when I pointed that out to him he said that I was correct but it would stop me from getting pulled over.
That said... I dont want stock exhaust. Its a turbo car and I want that free flowing goodness! Even now I am still running a chambered muffler. But, it has dual chrome tips so it doesn't look stock and thats why I got pulled over the first time. In fact the cop said "I know it isn't stock because no neon ever came with dual exhaust" which any neon enthusiast knows isn't true. But since we have officers with no training on the subject writing tickets I have to go back to a single tip muffler.
So what I am thinking to keep it legal, free flowing and sounding good is to do this. Install two 18" glasspacks in the tunnel. That should quiet it down quite a bit, enough to make it quiet with the current muffler. But... I still have twin tips at that point. I have a 2.5" flowmaster in my parts pile I was thinking of installing in the rear. My dad had a flowmaster on his turbo rampage with nothing else and it wasn't very loud and sounded nice. I know flowmasters are not the best muffler for a turbo car. But I do think they sound nice on turbo 4's and still should flow better than a off the shelf chambered muffler. I was just reading in GRM that a turndown usually removes 5 decibels, so I was planning on putting a turndown on also.
So the exhaust would go Turbo>18" glasspack>18" glasspack>Flowmaster>turndown at back bumper. Anyone ran a setup like that? I plan on painting everything that is visible in the back either flat black, flat grey or maybe even a mix to make it looks stock. Im also open to other suggestions.
Thanks