It was quieter then it was but it still seemed loud. My first thought was that i left a hole somewhere in one of my welds. So i removed the exhaust pipes and rewelded everything. But that didn't work, it was still loud.
Then i saw a Youtube video that suggested putting a rag in the end of each pipe, that will remove the noise coming out of the tailpipe and let you know where the noise is coming from. So while the car was running i pushed 2 rags in each tail pipe. The noise immediately went down to almost zero. That's when i realized that the loud noise was coming from the mufflers themselves.
When i originally ordered the parts, i bought them from Advanced Auto online because there's always big coupon/rebates on Slick Deals. I got something like $100 off the original price.
But on the Advanced Auto website, the only mufflers it said that fit my car were these Dynomax high performance mufflers. I just assumed that they were exactly like the stock mufflers that came with the car. If you read my original post, you know that i had to get a flange to increase the pipe size from 1 1/2" to 2". I should have realized then that something was wrong. It turned out that these mufflers were just loud, because of the larger pipe size.
So i sent an email to the Advance Auto company, telling them how they didn't offer the original exhaust on their site. I never really thought that they would say anything other then it was my fault for ordering the high performance ones. But i got in touch with this person at their company who was super helpful. He said that they did have the stock mufflers that would fit my car. After a few back and forth emails explaining about the noise he said that he could ship me the new stock mufflers and i could return the ones i originally bought. He said that i could be refunded or i could have the warranty carry over to the new parts. I told him that i didn't care about the warranty and that i would rather have the refund.
At first i was a little skeptical. I though that he might refund me the parts, but then charge me for the new ones. But it worked out amazingly well. I ended getting the new stock mufflers shipped to me, i sent back the high performance ones (with the UPS tag he sent me) and he refunded me the $150 that i paid for them. He never charged me for the new ones. It was great.
So here is the process of me putting on the new mufflers. I took off the exhaust and mufflers from the car again. This was something like the 4th time and i was getting pretty good at it. I had a system down where i would set the mufflers on milk crates then wheel the whole thing out using a furniture dolly.
It took a bit of grinding with the grinding wheel to remove the old mufflers. I tried my best to remove just the welds, without cutting the pipe underneath. Here you can see the size difference between the original (high performance) and stock ones.
Here's another view. The stock mufflers are much larger and have a smaller pipe.
Luckily when i originally attached the 1 1/2" to 2" pipe flange i left the 1 1/2" pipe sticking out a bit. It's a little hard to explain and i don't have a picture, but i added the flange without cutting the original pipe. This was lucky because after removing the flange i still had the full length of the exhaust pipe. So i just had to weld on the new mufflers.
I'm still a long way from being a good welder, but i'm slowly getting better.
So i will definitely be ordering parts from Advance Auto again. Not only because of the great $50 off coupons that you can find online, but also knowing that they have great customer service.
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