I can live with it. It's funny- I was in a big hurry to buy this exhaust that quite honestly is probably going to be a sub-5hp gain for a car I hardly drive, yet when Casey (I think that was his name? I'm bad with names) ran out to my car as I was leaving and told me it would be three weeks it didn't bother me in the least. After thinking about it, I actually prefer it this way because now I have three weeks of anticipation and daydreaming about this 3whp mod.

Let me explain my personal theory on exhaust mods with the current annoying and irrational enforcement of the exhaust law.

To get a ticket, a cop has to notice your exhaust and decide that it is worth pulling you over for. For the most part, cops drive around with their windows up listening to their police radios and the AC blasting on full. Because of this I feel that as long as your exhaust is not ludicrously, almost comically loud, but falls in what most people would think is a normal volume and noise range, cops are not going to notice you driving down the road normally because of noise. They will, however, notice a big shiny single exhaust outlet that looks out of place and pull you over for it. Of course, if you drive stupid and draw attention that way, they'll look for anything at all to pull you over and an exhaust that looks even slightly aftermarket is the first excuse they'll go for to pull you over.

I have real world observations to back this up. I had a turbo DSM with an electric cutout on the downpipe and a stock catback. It looked stock but it was very loud. I almost never had any problems, and when I did it was because I had been driving stupid and had caught their attention. That was when I noticed them on my tail and closed the cutout to shake them, which I always greatly enjoyed.

My friend had a turbo 240sx with some Japanese market aftermarket exhaust designed to be extremely quiet. It was 3" but it must've had five different resonators and pre-mufflers and whatnot. The muffler was an effective stock-like oval muffler. The problem was that the exit was a huge single tip, probably 4.5 inches and very shiny. With this exhaust installed the car was very, very quiet. The quietest modded car I had ever heard. So quiet you could hear the throttle open and close and the air whoosh into the intake even standing behind the car. He was pulled over for this shiny but astoundingly quiet exhaust on a regular basis and received several tickets for it.

That's why I worry more about looks and less about sound. If we had some fair system for testing exhaust noise and a specific limit on allowable decibel levels, I would go about things differently and go for the best flowing, quietest muffler without worrying about appearance. Instead, we have this highly subjective and illogical system, so we have to do our best to work within it.