Hey guys, I installed the system myself on my car tonight, here's my experience from start to driving.
First off, I would NOT do this again without a lift. I just used jack stands and it was a pain. It took me about 4 hours to do, and I consider myself pretty mechanical, even though I haven't replaced an exhaust in particular before. It took longer than it should have party because I ran into a few snags, which I will discuss a little further down.
There was nothing really hard about it, besides the fact that you only have about a foot and a half of ground clearance to work under. Actually the hardest part was getting the stock exhaust out of and the Borla into the rubber hangers. Impossible without a pry bar, good thing I had one. Again, try using a pry bar with limited ground clearance. Maybe I should have jacked the car up higher, but I don't think that would have helped much.
Keep in mind I'm doing this while lying down on concrete in my garage. I don't have one of those rollie things that you can lie down on and wheel yourself around. I'll probably wake up tomorrow with bruises all over my back and side
The other hard part was using a torque wrench for the clamp bolts, under jack stands. And it's weird that the Borla instructions say to torque the stock clamp bolts to 32-35 ft lbs. But by the time it's torqued to about 20 ft lbs, the screw is out of threads. So I just left it at about 20 ft lbs. The Borla supplied clamps (used to adjust tip length) were able to be torqued down to 32-35 ft lbs.
There were 3 things I was midly disappointed with. The first was that the package seemed to have been missing a couple of hex nuts, to attach the stock ground wire to the Borla mufflers. The package only came with two hex nuts, although I believe the packing list stated there were (4). So I used the 2 that it came with to attach the muffler to the rear rubber mounts, and used my own nuts and bolts to attach the stock ground wire to the muffler, good thing I had a few laying around. What are these ground wires for anyway?
Another possibility is that I mounted the ground wires to the wrong point on the muffler and was supposed to mount it somewhere else, hence not needing 2 extra hex nuts? I don't know.
The stock system did not need nuts because there are threaded nuts attached to the muffler itself. The Borla does not have threaded nuts attached to the muffler so regular nuts must be used.
2nd is that the 2 tips coming out of each muffler are stuck together, there is NO space whatsoever to fit a rag or anything between them, which will make it hard to clean. In fact it even looks like my right tips are actually welded together. Weird.
The 3rd thing was that the right tips were polished nicely inside and out. However the left tips were only polished on the outside, and the inside was not. Looks like they forgot to polish the inside of that one. Not a big deal, I have a dremel and polished the inside of the tips myself.
These are somewhat minor annoyances, wihch I suspect may be resolved with the "final production" version of these mufflers. I did get one of the first 4 "production" mufflers, but maybe they are still working out the "bugs."
On to the perfomance and sound. When I first started the car up in my garage, I thought there were 18" subwoofers in my trunk! This exhaust definitely has resonance upon start up, but seems to quiet down a little after it's warm.
Then while driving it, like some others have stated, it does have drone @ and below 2000 rpm, and at times it is pretty loud, especially in the higher gears. Your choices are to either downshift or go a little faster.
The stock system has a little drone at around 2000 rpm in higher gears also. The Borla makes this drone much more pronounced. As for the overall exhaust sound upon acceleration, it sounds great. It retains that great V-8 rumble, but is louder. I like it.
I did not notice any performance gains yet (it was raining very heavily, enough to cause large pools of water on the freeway, not exactly the best time to test out your car's performance). Also I believe the car's ECU needs time to "learn" the new exhaust system in order for it to produce any power gains.
I was only able to drive about 5 miles after putting this on, so these words are just my first impressions. The sound and/or perfomance may change after the exhaust breaks in, so I'll just need some more drive time.
This is definitely not a modest sounding exhaust. If you like loud, then this is for you. If you like something more subtle/quieter, then maybe something like a Supersprint might more suit your tastes. I tend to llke my exhausts on the "aggressive" side, so I like this one so far. Although I wish it didn't have as much drone at the lower rpms as I tend to keep my car in the highest gear possible while just cruisng to try to optimize gas mileage.
Overall this is a high quality product, looks very solid and well made, and is lightweight. And also being that it is a bolt on, this system just cannot be beat within its price range, or even above its price range for that matter too.
Bob, thanks for getting this shipped out to me. Also if you're able to shed some light on any of the 3 concerns I brought up, please do. Also I figured you wanted feedback, both positive and negative so that Borla could try to improve on the product they are producing and shipping out.