u/wolf_walker8

I can't imagine how many thousands of dollars I have spent in my life on OEM European hydraulic motor mounts over the years, because I learned very early in my automotive hobby journey that aftermarket rubber parts suck ass by and large. Yet for some reason my optimistic self figured hey, it's just an old 350 chevy, surely the aftermarket mounts are fine. Well no tf they were not. Not only were they butter soft, but they didn't begin to line up correctly out of the box and were an astounding pita to install. Unfortunately GM no longer makes them but I was over some time able to rummage up a couple of NOS ones on ebay. They weren't even expensive. They slid right in with minimal fuss and are worlds stiffer. That one on the right has maybe 2k miles on it and the insert is literally flopping around in the housing it's so deformed already. They were soft enough I had a clutch shudder till I replaced the driver side with OEM a few months ago, finally getting around to doing the pass side now. The hell of it is I doubt my originals at 160K needed replacing, they weren't oil soaked, I was getting desperate trying to find a weird vibration (it wasn't the mounts) so I could have left well enough alone.

2.5 mandrel stainless, X pipe, V band clamps in the middle, Borla Pro XS. I'm not much of a welder, or fabricator, so please don't point out the obvious thing I screwed up. :)

The mufflers and tips are all oriented correctly though, looks off in the pic but they are straight IRL. That was a giant pita with the one hanger on the end and two angles and rotation to get right. Someone that has more experience with such or that was less picky than I am would likely have a much easier time of it. I've done a handful of exhausts like this but none of them ever needed so much packaging and fiddling with to have them look right from the outside. I'm not in love with the visible muffler bit but unless you can offset your tips like the factory did and recess the muffler up in the quarters you're pretty well stuck with this. I see a lot of pre-built aftermarket systems are this way too. It's kinda growing on me, I matched the mounting angle of the mufflers to the rear quarter lower body line and they only sorta peek out. I used clamp on tips so they would be fully adjustable rotationally and for/aft. I hate tips that don't line up right.

It sounds.. Okay. It's louder than the Corvette Central "no drone" stock replacements byu far which had one crooked tip that drove me nuts and did in fact have a drone between 12 and 1600rpm or so. The Borla are DEEP, like bass deep, at idle and you can really hear that distinctly from the rear of the car, all the time. There isn't really any drone to speak of unless you go out of your way to lug it (manual), but that bass note is always there. It's not crazy bad, normal radio volume works, can still conversate, etc. It sounds pretty interesting when hard on the throttle, I suspect it's a lot louder outside than in. There was a noticeable uptick in performance vs a stock system with no cats. Not 20hp or anything crazy, but it feels a little more lively on roads I know how the car behaves on. For the money, not bad. I wish there was a little more cool noise on deceleration (manual) but overall it's a pretty good mild non-stock exhaust. I suspect it would perk up with a less weak motor attached to it.

Not like flowmasters or such, old school glasspack looking but not.

I've got an old 350 chebby I'd like to sound a little different and was pondering them.

I think the design is used in sidepipes a fair bit but they do offer differing lengths of mufflers.

Stainless Works sells them but they are way more than it's worth to me.

There are two other outfits I know of.

These dudes: https://highfloperformance.com/collections/stainless-steel-muffler

That I think used to be Sweet Thunder or something like that.

And these dudes:

https://www.classicchambered.com/classic/products.html

Not a very modern website but hey.

The difference I mostly see is the louvers inside the muffler on the former are much more aggressive and the latter much less so. The latter, despite the old site, actually seems to give more info on core size and such. Max flow isn't a super huge issue but I'd like to cram 350hp through a pair of 2.5's at some point, surely either one would be fine for that.

Anyone ever mess with these?