Hey guys, just wanted to give a bit of an update for anyone thinking about a similar product.
I ended up purchasing the MagnaFlow muffler for the simple reason that it's $50+ cheaper than the Borla. I'm the IT Admin of a few Lincoln Technical Institute campuses in NJ and have connections with their auto campuses. I asked an instructor at one of the campuses if he can weld the new muffler on and he agreed so I was fortunate enough to have it done for free. We ended up cutting off the "muffler" that comes on the exhaust which is really just basically hollow with literally the bare minimum padding (picture below) and welded the new muffler on in its place. I've driven about 500 miles since then (this past Friday) so it had time to break in. Here are my thoughts:
At low RPM, the exhaust is very quiet. While idling, it's completely silent in the car and very quiet if you're standing right behind the exhaust. For comparison, I'd say in the car while it's idling, the stock CP-E is about a 7/10 (10 being the loudest), with the muffler, it's probably a 2/10 or 1/10. From behind the exhaust, the stock CP-E is 7/10, I'd say with the new muffler, it's about 3/10.
I've done a lot of highway driving and have been testing for drone while cruising at high speed/low RPM/6th gear up and down hills. With high speed (60+ MPH), light acceleration, low RPM (<2,500), and on flat ground, I'd rate the stock CP-E exhaust at 8/10. With the new muffler, I'd rate it at 4/10 with the same conditions. There's a slight hum, nothing more. 1/10 silent if just cruising with no acceleration. Same conditions but up hill, I'd rate the stock CP-E exhaust at 9/10. With the new muffler, I'd rate it 5/10. Slightly more hum than on flat ground but very controlled. No interior rattling and no deafening drone.
One thing to note, at WOT, the car still
SCREAMS. Like, I actually think that at WOT, it's louder with the new muffler than the stock exhaust was. It's interesting. Overall, I'm extremely pleased. I'm going to test everything again without the two tiny resonators at the back of the exhaust to see how things change. My next part of the build revolves around re-rerouting the exhaust from the center of the car to the sides so those resonators will be chopped off most likely. I expect a significant change but depending on how severe, I'll have to find a new resonator to weld into the new exhaust path. Once I continue with the build, I'll update this thread again.