Hey
@FlyBry , I'm actually surprised you didn't see some of my follow-up posts sometime ago. I did actually get the downpipes and the turbo adapters installed probably about 6 months ago. I then fought with exhaust sounds for probably 4 or 5 months because of the cat back issues. Here's my thing, I really really like the SPD down pipes and turbo adapters, if I had it to do all over again, I probably wouldn't have done a cat-back exhaust with all of it.
My first go with the cat back was immediately after doing the downpipe I installed the MagnaFlow cat-back kit. It was a nice quality kit and I liked the design, but the sound was terrible. The drone inside the vehicle was insane. It actually made it almost impossible to drive and talk to people on the backseat.
I then bought the lge-cts kit, which was also pretty nice. But again the sound was just too much. I actually worked with their customer service and we experimented with a couple of different mufflers. They were actually super awesome to work with, but ultimately, I should have worked with SPD from the beginning. They essentially told me that you must use their stage 2 resonator once you've done the down pipes. These engines are just not friendly to exhaust systems and sound once modified. The SPD stage 2 resonator was better than either of the two mufflers probably combined. I don't have a max, but I was barely able to squeeze in the SPD stage 2 resonator and the lge-cts 14" muffler. The drone is much better but it is still very loud. Louder than I would like it to be, but at this point I don't have many choices.
I will say this, this thing drives like crazy, and sounds amazing. Other than the exhaust of course. The turbo spool is insane and I absolutely love the feel of this car. I haven't officially measured it but I know I'm sub 5 second 0 to 60 (and that's at 6k feet). It's actually kind of scary how quick this thing can be.
I would definitely do it all again, but I would work with SPD from the beginning. I am using about 75% of the LGE-CTS kit, and sadly having almost brand new magnaflow cat-back system sitting in my garage I can't do anything with. The guys at SPD are phenomenal, sometimes they are very swamped and a little bit slow to get back to you, but once you get them on the phone, they are super helpful and very smart.
Oh and one more thing, my exhaust guy that I've been using for 20 years, that I went to to get some of this stuff spot welded together instead of just clamps, told me that he's often replacing at least one or two of the factory mufflers in these vehicles and the f-150s pretty regularly. He seems to believe that the engines design and the heat from the turbos, burns out mufflers quickly. Might be something just to keep your eyes on. He doesn't even like installing aftermarket mufflers on these, he thinks in most cases they're actually even worse off than the factory mufflers.
The worst thing though, is the fact that he's doing sometimes upwards of 20 cars a day for catalytic converter theft. He actually talked about the fact that he's over 2 months booked out right now for cat replacements. This thing is a real problem here. Makes me feel great that I have the RCI skid plates underneath this thing, pretty much impossible to get the cats out with those on.
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