I heard Ayumi's true exhaust note for the first time today. We were working on her exhaust in welding class today to repair the hanger and one of my redneck friends was trying to convince me to just straight pipe it, literally just hack the muffler off. I decided to meet him halfway of sorts and we unbolted the muffler, swung it out of the way and fired her up.

The beautiful roar she made stunned me. I had feared that doing a cat back exhaust would make her sound like an obnoxious Honda, but her straight piped note is more akin to a V8 muscle car, with half the cylinders of course. We put it all back together at the end of class, but still that's a hard sound to forget.

While I greatly enjoyed the note, I'm concerned about the noise level landing me in trouble with the law despite the many other vehicles in my neighborhood running around with aftermarket exhausts. Plus Ayumi sees a good bit of night driving. I also have a habit of cruising through neighborhoods.

I could spend a boatload of money on an exhaust valve that switches between two pipes, one muffled, one side dumped. Or I could go a much cheaper route and buy a couple of reusable clamps and a section of straight pipe. I would then just swap out the muffler and straight pipe as I saw necessary.

Agh! It's hard to decide