After many weeks of seraching and reading threads. doing research on exhaust and shopping for the best deals i decided to have a custom cat-back installed on my car.
I went with a Magnaflow Race series muffler 5x8 oval with a 4 inch tip. I used 2.25" piping straight from the cat w/o a resonator.

I went with the custom b/c of the price difference $215 installed vs $400 for the Magnaflow for the lancers. Also i did not want a resonator, because i wanted a louder exhaust.

I can say that this exhuast was well worth the time and money put into it. The exhaust has a deep throaty sound at idle, and gets louder but still deep as the RPMs climb. Inside the car the sound is not annouying or obnoxious, but outside your car makes a lasting impression. I have been getting compliments just cruising through parking lots not even at high RPMs. I highly recommend magnaflow to anyone who wants a deep, almost V8 type sound. very different from a ricey civic.

 

Congrats man I love my custom Magnaflow catback as well. Initially I didn't have a resonator, but after installing my RRM header, I had to get one cuz I would go deaf cruising at freeway speeds. Enjoy it!

 

can you post or email me some sound clips, i just want to hear the difference between resonator/ no resonator.

 

Mandel or non-mendrel

 

I'll take a sound clip of mine tomorrow hopefully.

 

the guy was able to do the whole system with only do bends, they are mandel-bent, but the bends are not enough to give any great hinderance to exhaust flow.

to the sound-clips i do not have the equipment to be able to give you an accurate sound. however the magnaflow website has several sound clips of different cars, and they have a WRX with and without a resonator. I used it to make my decision against the resonator, but i am for sure not getting headers. if you are getting headers then you need some resistance or the tone will be to high and whiny. the resonator will give you this resistance.

i did have a question for someone to answer. How would removing the cat completely affect my car, both positivly and negativly? In Louisiana they are not strict on the regualtion of cat convertors so i could get around it if it would improve power and sound without hurting my engine or gas mileage.

 

yeah, i used to live in louisiana, and they really don't care about emissions......which is good for us, bad for the planet

anywho, if anything, get a high flow cat from buschur. honestly, the test pipe just removes too many restrictions and you lose backpressure (loss in torque). i think the only people that really benefit from a test pipe are the big turbo guys. then again, i think the high flow cat over stock barely yields about 2 hp.........so it probably isn't worth it

 

ah, good point on the headers issue. I'll just get the resonator.