X-pipe dilemma

[850tgul]

Hi all

My car has a Borla ATAK catback which, imo, gives off a great V8 tone. Nice bassy rumble at cruising speeds and then it quiets down in the higher revs. In my search to make the car a bit louder I just added a Remus H-pipe which kept the primary cats in place but eliminated the secondary cats and resonators. The Remus pipe is one of the less popular mid pipes/x-pipes out there so I was taking a bit of a gamble on it. My hope was that it would enhance the tone of the ATAK without being too overbearing.

So I’ve had it one for a week now and it is fairly obnoxious. Sounds like a nascar at low speeds and cruising, almost like a cammed hot rod. Worst of all it has so much rasp at high rpms it sounds like a tommy gun going off. It’s actually embarrassing when merging onto a highway or accelerating in any meaningful way. I could almost deal with the low speed nascar sound but the brutal rasp when getting on it is not sustainable.

Now I know just removing it and going back to the stock x-pipe will be too quiet so I am thinking of either modifying the Remus h-pipe by installing some resonators (so my setup would be primary cats and some resonators, effectively only deleting the secondary cats) or modifying my stock x-pipe to delete the resonators only thereby having the primary and secondary cats only.

My question is which reduces high rpm rasp more, the secondary cats or the resonators? I have searched and seen contradictory info. Thanks!

[SYT_Shadow]

Add resonators

[eatsleepboost]

I was in a similar position. I had the ATAK on my e92 m3 by itself. Loved the sound. I then put on a quad resonated catless xpipe. It sounded decent but too loud overall and therefore I decided to sell the ATAK and get the bomiz valved rear section.

Doesn't help you much as I didn't find a solution where I could keep the ATAK but just accepted that I needed to get rid of it.

[850tgul]

Originally Posted by eatsleepboost

I was in a similar position. I had the ATAK on my e92 m3 by itself. Loved the sound. I then put on a quad resonated catless xpipe. It sounded decent but too loud overall and therefore I decided to sell the ATAK and get the bomiz valved rear section.

Doesn't help you much as I didn't find a solution where I could keep the ATAK but just accepted that I needed to get rid of it.

Yeah I actually have a Remus race catback sitting in my garage but I just love the v8 tone the ATAK gives off. It is one of the louder catbacks for our car so swapping to something quieter, like the Remus, might work volume wise but I’m just not sure if I’d like the tone of the Remus with the H-pipe. I didn’t love it when I installed it briefly with the stock x-pipe.

[eatsleepboost]

The resonators are what remove the rasp. Just cutting out the secondary cats at a muffler shop and welding straight pipes in probably would have been what you wanted. Retain the resonators and the borla atak would just be a bit louder.

[s14_kev]

I would add resonators to the Remus but if you don't want to hack it up, secondary car delete is probably what you're looking for.

FWIW, I did a resonator delete on my stock x pipe with M Performance Exhaust and it sounded pretty good but had a lot of rasp when getting on it. I since then installed test pipes and the combination of that with the resonator delete was too loud and raspy. I put the resonators back in and it is perfect IMO. Less rasp but similar volume to the resonator delete.

[850tgul]

Thanks all, I’ll be adding the resonators back