Replaced the mid pipes

I gave up on the local muffler person after all he could say was "this is a lot of work", "i'm sure I can do it, but it is going to take a lot of time"

I took the car over to my other trusted source who is pretty bare bones place who only do mufflers...lots of old mufflers stacked all over the place...place is in a bad neighborhood...

I showed him the photo of the pipe which Maserati of Ontario did, he said, "no problem"...

They lifted up the car though and noticed that in my set up, I had the sort of double wishbone joints at the muffler side already, so all he had to do was to cut off the center resonator and put straight pipes from the Catalytic side to the muffler end.....

He used Aluminum piping of the same diameter of the exisiting pipes...

After the resonator came off, I checked it out, of note, It is VERY heavy, the resonator is pretty much a straight through design, so removing it and replacing it with straight pipes, will likely not dyno any performance gains other than a lighter weight car.......so it looks like this project would be for sound and losing about 25 lbs off cars curb weight.

I should add for the record, I have Tubi mufflers already...

When I started the car I got a very deep rumble upon start up....

What I've noticed so far...

In first gear the car sound is loud, but distant, almost like the car is in a canyon and the sound echos....

2nd -gear---more of the same as first, but less..

3rd-4th -5th -6th....within the 0-3500 RPM range, I can really hear the engine winding and it sounds like a race car, the exhaust engine tones are very prounounced, with the Tubi only, I got a deep aubilble rumble....now I get definition of the engine sound.....kind of like going from crappy speakers, to refined speakers....

Above 3500- to 6500 rpm, the sound is louder, but taking the foot off the accelerator and cruising, the car is no louder than with the Tubi...

What also happens, is that I can now feel the car more, ...from the floorboard into my seats, I feel the reverberations of the engine more which is a good thing.....

All in all, I am still on the fence if I am going to keep it this way....what bothers me the most is in 1st gear, the car sound thin and whinny, not what i expected....and echoey as I mentioned earlier...

the cost to do this was a measly $80 and the guys said it would be no problem going back to stock......

the muffler guys were pretty impressed by the underside of the car and commented that the quality of build was tremendous.

I will give it another few days to a week to decide if I like the set-up....for those interested, it took about 20 minutes to do...and the car with my Exsiting Tubi, is still at an aubible level which is livable....

OK NOW I AM HAPPY!

I went back the muffler shop on Saturday. ..this after getting a second opinion from a well respected muffler guy who said there is "no middle ground, put the original resonator back"

the person who did my work, suggested he could lower the noise level by 30% by adding 2 small approx 8 inch long glasspacks between the straight pipes. the glasspacks are a straight through design as well, but have some outer sound insulation and within the pipe have some little metal bits within the pipe (perhaps for a little backpressure?)...

I was skeptical, but did it, thinking if this did not do the trick I was putting back the original resonator back....Started the car up and it was clearly quieter, almost like stock......however driving around at the right RPMs the car now has a DEEP grumble and when shifting they are clearly defined. the car is now exactly what I was looking for, now too loud as to attract attention, but the car now clearly has a distinctive grumble that those in the know understand.

so my set up is this....

Tubi mufflers, removed the heavy heavy center resonator and replaced with 2 straight pipes with small 8inch glass packs welded in between towards the rear piping..