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WRXtuners Member
From: Lancing, Tennessee
Registered: Dec 2006
Posts: 24
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SPT Exhaust
Well, I'm sure this has been beaten to death too, but since I posted about the SPT intake a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would give my impression of the exhaust as well, now that I have installed it on my 06 WRX wagon. You may recall that my primary concern is that my mods are warranty-friendly.
For those who may not know, the SPT exhaust is 3" a cat-back system made for Subaru by Bosal. It consists of two pieces - the midpipe and the axle-back section. Both pieces are stainless steel, with the axle-back section being chrome plated. It comes with the gasket for the axle-back/midpipe junction, and you are expected to re-use the donut gasket at the downpipe. It also comes with new spring bolts for the donut connection to make up for the thicker flange.
The system seems to be well-constructed. Everything is mandrel-bent and fit was perfect. The flanges are much more substantial that the stock exhaust, being made of what appears to be solid 3/8" stock. According to the literature, the SPT exhaust is about 2.2 pounds lighter than the stock system. If I had to complain about something, it would be that the welds are a bit sloppy. Not poorly done - they certainly appear to be full-thickness welds, but they just aren't pretty - uneven with some noticable spatter. This is a small gripe, since these welds will never be seen anyway.
Installation was a breeze - even without help. I rolled the rear of the car onto a couple of ramps, disconnected the negative terminal of the battery (to reset the ECU), sprayed the connections with PB Blaster, sprayed the hangers with silicone and then went to gather the tools I would need while the exhaust cooled completely.
Removal of the old exhaust was simple. The axle-back section comes off first. The nuts connecting the the axle-back to the midpipe broke loose very easily - though I am sure this has a lot to do with the fact that the car only has about 6K miles on it. If your can has higher mileage, you might want to let the PB Blaster work on the nuts a bit longer, since they will have a higher probability of being siezed.
I was concerned about getting the hanger studs out of the rubber hangers, but lubed with a bit of silicon, they came out very easily. It was a little awkward dropping the muffler and pipe by myself, but by removing the nuts, and disconnecting the two rear hangers, I found that it balanced nicely on the remaining hanger well enough to let me easily slip it off and lower the axle-back gently to the ground.
Getting the midpipe off was a bit more difficult, only because my, ummmm, middle-aged spread didn't permit me to crawl completely under the car. Well, it took me untold thousands of beers to get my belly that way, I suppose I should be proud of it... At any rate, I loosened the spring bolts easily, and was able to simply slide the midpipe out of the only remaining hanger.
Installation of the new exhaust was simply a reverse of the above process. The only tricky part is getting the spring bolts started. I did this by first hanging the midpipe by the hanger, and holding it in the correct position while I clamped everything tightly together in the right orientation with a pair of Vice Grips across the two flanges. This allowed me to free up both hands, and compressed things enough to let about a thread and a half of the spring bolts poke through the other side of the flange - just enough to get the nut started. The rest was cake. From the first crank of the wrench to the test drive, the whole process took maybe 30 minutes.
Once installed, I was ready to go for a ride. I have listened to some of the clips on the interweb, and the literature said that the sound would be a "noticable increase from stock", but I still had no idea what to expect. I didn't want something too loud, but I also wanted to hear that wonderful boxer sound better than the stock exhaust allows. Tastes will certainly vary, but I found the SPT exhaust to perfectly suit my taste. The sound is louder, to be sure, but not *too* loud. When it first fired up, I was greeted with a deep, throaty, slightly muted rumble. As I drove off, it built in intensity, but not too much in loudness. At WOT, it sounded sufficiently angry, but did not echo throughout the entire Tennessee Valley. I found it to be a perfect balance for me. Not enough to wake the nieghbors, but enough to encourage me to turn off the radio on my 1-hour commute and listen to boxer music instead. Very tastefully done.
OK, so now I have paired the SPT intake with the SPT exhaust. The Subaru literature claims that this combination is good for 18 extra horses on the WRX. Well, the only dyno I have available is the "butt dyno", and for the most part, I think the claims are a bit optimistic. Having said that, I can definitely feel a difference - even more so now that I have installed the exhaust and reset the ECU. Additionally, I have not given the ECU time to re-learn again. The turbo is definitely spooling sooner - I'm guessing about 200 - 300 RPM sooner, and the car pulls better. I believe that this will get even better as the ECU learns that it can breathe just a bit better. I suppose that there may be some spot along the curve where HP is up by close to 18, but it definitely is not 18 more at peak power. Nonetheless, there is a modest performance increase - and it sounds great.
Next up is a rear sway bar and pink springs. Maybe by then, they'll have all of the bugs worked out of AP 2.0 so I can go to stage 1.
Stage 2 will have to wait until the warranty is out...
Tim
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