I drove it with a downpipe, dude. You misunderstood. And I'm seeing a shitload of smoke. It's getting progressively worse. There are no codes being thrown at this time, but strangely enough, every time I take a sharp LEFT turn, the coolant light pops up for a second. The coolant level in the reservoir was just above "full," but I overfilled it close to the top just incase. And I also checked the coolant level in the radiator, it's fine. Thermostat reads below half every time and despite this, I have never seen my E-fans activate.

What it all comes down to is that:
- I'm feeling an obvious loss of power, gaining RPMs is significantly slower than it used to be, across the entire power band.
- There are a shit ton of embarrassingly thick clouds of white smoke shooting out of my exhaust, but it's not constant. It comes out selectively. It usually starts as soon as I downshift or slow down. Once you produce a load on the motor and then take it away, the smoke comes out. And it'll pour out for a short time idling afterwords.
- The exhaust coming out is abnormally hot.

I doubt that the exhaust has anything to do with this. Keep in mind, this complete exhaust (including the downpipe) had been sitting outside for a couple of months, and I've exercised the possibility that residue on the exhaust is simply burning off, but that doesn't at all explain my lack of performance, and my crippled boost.

It's possible that the smoke is just the pipes burning off residue, and it's completely unrelated to my lack of performance. Two completely different problems. I once heard about a guy who drive his car after having it sit in hurricane weather for a couple of months, and that it took him three weeks to burn out all the residue. I'd like for this to be the case, 'cause then I could just blame it on a boost leak or something, but it just doesn't seem to be the case. The car's performance is getting worse and worse as I drive it (I should stop driving it, but I really need to get to work, and this is currently my only RUNNING car).

Also, I do have a boost leak, and I have been aware of it from the beginning. The pipes are garbage, and I did what I could to patch them up 'till I could afford some hard pipes, but it wasn't too bad.