Exhaust replacement

[banpei]

On Saturday, I replaced the Tanabe with the Fujitsubo exhaust at the TACN meet. I'll put the full report in the project thread, but just adding here some relevant information.

First of all, this is the difference in looks:

On the left is the old Tanabe Hyper Medalion and on the right is the Fujitsubo Legalis-R W-tail.

The Fujitsubo was noticeably quieter, so that was a definite win. The Tanabe makes a low hum with a lot of bass (like a cannon exhaust) and the Fujitsubo is much more toned down. The sound is pleasant, so it's not like the car now sounds like an EE80 on steroids.
In terms of unscientific measurements I took, on my way to the meeting I measured inside the cabin about 77 dB at 100km/h (3500rpm) and on my way back that was between 74 dB to 75 dB. It's almost half as loud as before in that rpm range. At 90 km/h at 5000 rpm it was somewhere in the 78 db to 79 dB range inside the cabin.
I'll try to do a more scientific measurement this week and compose a video out of it.

[banpei]

I have made a comparison video of the Tanabe and Fujitsubo exhausts:

It's not the final version, so it's not officially published.
Key takeaways:
- Tanabe exhaust is about 2 times as loud at idle and nearly 3 times as loud at 5000 rpm
- Tanabe seems to have a deeper bass
- Tanabe sounds much angrier at high rpm
- Fujitsubo sounds much more distinguished
- Fujitsubo is the better looking exhaust

In all honesty, I personally like the sound of the Tanabe better. However, that doesn't mean I don't like the sound of the Fujitsubo. On the contrary: it sounds really nice and at high rpm it does have a nice sound as well. For the purpose I bought it (to make my car quieter), it definitely suits the bill and I achieved that. In addition to that, I like the looks of the Fujitsubo much more than the boy-racer look of the Tanabe.