Exhaust, a lot of different companies

[Old Mike Emerson]

Researching exhaust options. Ford Fiesta Exhaust Sound 🔥 Upgrade,Modified,Review,Mods,Flowmaster,Magnaflow,Borla,Remus,Nexus+ - YouTube

 

[akiraproject24]

Wow hadnt seen this one. When I was researching I really liked the Flowmaster sound. Ended up going Thermal though. Steel quality and forum members having already done the research years ahead of me...

 

[Dpro]

Not bad but they left out the Thermal which has become rather popular. I would love a KMS Hurricane except not readily available stateside and also needs a rear valence change and their valence is the euro one which is different from our. The Milltek did sound ,quite nice as did the Borla. I am not sure the Borla is being made anymore. It’s another one of those not easy to get exhausts . Ford used to sell it through Ford Racing. Not anymore though. Lot of exhausts in that comparo where utter shite. THe Mountune was good as well I should mention .

 

[NATYPE]

Also shopping around for my theoretical exhaust right now. Giving everything a fair chance to my ears and I’ve ended up with this list of options. My main want is something that doesn’t just sound good, but seems to have a tone that fits the ST well. The Thermal seems awesome in so many ways, but every video / sound test I’ve seen makes me weary of actually liking it. It sounds great, I just don’t think it sounds like a Fiesta to me

Milltek Race (non-res) - this one has really started becoming my new favorite, feels like what a Fiesta ST should sound like (to me) and overall the build and hardware seem great

FSWerks - Cheap, love the sound, love FSwerks, also best looking dual tip IMO

Greddy Evolution GT - personally like the big single tip, Greddy build seems excellent, a little less common, very worried about it just being constant bass-y noise pollution in the cabin given another users experience. It’s overall tone seems great assuming that’s not an issue properly installed.

Wish the Borla was still around, does deep and burbly like the Thermal with something about it sounding slightly more ‘right’ to me. Also hard to really say with the level of other mods people can be running in test videos. Overall everything but the MBRP sounds pretty nice to my ears lol.

 

[dhminer]

GReddy gets some hate for the single tip but I dig it as well. I love it. It’s louder than I expected but also that’s with a cat less downpipe. In the spring I’ll be swapping for catted and can post some YouTube vids of the difference.

Full transparency the Cobb I had before this with the stock downpipe sounded better, though.

 

[ronmcdon]

The Tuneplus titanium catback sounds pretty interesting although pricey at $2k w/muffler. Not sure the weight saving is necessarily worth it, given a catback has lowest center of gravity. always was curious how a titanium exhaust sounded in person.

https://www.tuneplusinc.com/product...or-2014-ford-fiesta-st?variant=19579057995833

with the Thermal, I think it's a good choice if you prefer something more subtle. It does open up a lot more, although with less drone even you get a catted downpipe. I am liking the Thermal and COBB catted DP combo a lot.

 

[M-Sport fan]

The Tuneplus titanium catback sounds pretty interesting although pricey at $2k w/muffler. Not sure the weight saving is necessarily worth it, given a catback has lowest center of gravity. always was curious how a titanium exhaust sounded in person.

https://www.tuneplusinc.com/product...or-2014-ford-fiesta-st?variant=19579057995833

I wonder just how much the weight would increase if they offered that system in 3" diameter tubing.

From owning a titanium framed road bike (Merlin Road), I understand, and am not the least bit shocked by the co$t of that system.

Welding/brazing titanium is a VERY complex, and exacting process, and yes, one has to pay for that.

The idle and stationary revving in that video does sound a lot like rally cars, but it is still a bunch quieter than those competition cars on acceleration, decel, and steady state cruising (as it should and must be, in order to be street legal).

 

[aabicke2996]

The thermal and FSWerks sound the best to me. I initially wanted the Flowmaster because it got that nice deep sound. I had a 3 inch turbo back to a Flowmaster 40 series, 2.75 in out on my 2010 Genesis Coupe 2.0T and it sounded amazing. A lot of people thought it was a v6 or even an 8.

I'm leaning towards the Thermal and FSWerks because I'm actually looking for something subtle, most importantly the cabin drone. Sound deadening in the FiST is..... crap. It's a fun car, but still a fiesta at the end of the day haha

 

[ron@whoosh]

this video is "special", actually a nightmare !

picture of the fiesta is well, not a ST
there are NOT 2 versions of MBRP
the cobb exhaust is louder than the cobb turbo back which it is certainly not. The exhaust with COBB high flow cat is louder than with the stock downpipe
there are NOT 2 versions of Magnaflow
Nexus is actually cp-e Nexus
Mishimoto - there is a resonated and non-resonated. which is it?
Remus - same as above, which options ?? There are different front and rear sections available
Cobra - there are literally 9 options available resonated, non-resonated, single tip or dual tip which does change the sound
Mongoose - don't even get me started
KMS sounds
Same with Milltek, they got it all wrong and then list Cobra again, again

Oh and Dpro is correct Borla is certainly discontinued

Thermal should be on there for sure. I'd bet Thermal sales alone count for more than most all the other systems combined in the USA.. MBRP would be the only true rival due to the price point and availability from eBay/amazon to your local street corner
Milltek is #1 in the UK by a landslide

 

[dhminer]

Also FWIW I have a buddy with the Milltek non-resonated + milltek catless DP and it’s one of the best sounding systems I’ve heard on our cars.

I know the thermal sounds great but I can’t get past the fact that they didn’t weld real flanges on it and ,even if I’m being ridiculous, I want welded flanges. The Cobb and GReddy I’ve had both had beautifully welded flanges for me to tuck under the car and never see.

 

[Old Mike Emerson]

There are too many damned choices. I have run Flowmaster on every hot rod I've built, always sounded great, but those were V-8's. At my age I think I'm leaning toward subtle more than in your face. I think it's down to Flowmaster, Cobb or Thermal. Leaning heavily toward Thermal.

 

[Clint Beastwood]

The Tuneplus titanium catback sounds pretty interesting although pricey at $2k w/muffler. Not sure the weight saving is necessarily worth it, given a catback has lowest center of gravity. always was curious how a titanium exhaust sounded in person.

https://www.tuneplusinc.com/product...or-2014-ford-fiesta-st?variant=19579057995833

with the Thermal, I think it's a good choice if you prefer something more subtle. It does open up a lot more, although with less drone even you get a catted downpipe. I am liking the Thermal and COBB catted DP combo a lot.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it doesn't save *that* much weight. In terms of how it affects sound, I used to have an audi with Ti exhaust and it made everything... sharper? like, snaps and crackles were much higher pitched.

 

[Erick_V]

I know the thermal sounds great but I can’t get past the fact that they didn’t weld real flanges on it and ,even if I’m being ridiculous, I want welded flanges.

Literally the ONLY thing that bothers me about the Thermal exhaust. I thought I was weird for having that gripe lol

I’ll still end up buying it though 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[Clint Beastwood]

There are too many damned choices. I have run Flowmaster on every hot rod I've built, always sounded great, but those were V-8's. At my age I think I'm leaning toward subtle more than in your face. I think it's down to Flowmaster, Cobb or Thermal. Leaning heavily toward Thermal.

Having done tons of instrumented testing on FiST exhaust, and exhaustively (lol) digging in to how each company engineers their exhaust, Thermal and CP-E are the only ones I found that were actually "engineered" for the car, vs using off the shelf parts to fab a system. Between the two, the Thermal's a little better engineered, with it's integrated quarter wave resonator doing a great job of canceling the 106hz hum so endemic to 3" exhaust on a FiST. The CP-E is barking up the right tree, but I think their helmholtz chamber is a little undersized.

I haven't been able to get hands on with a Flowmaster system, but the couple I've heard sound like they don't drone much - but Flowmaster isn't really known for their engineering of sport compact exhaust, I can't find any indication of actual drone cancellation but it really does seem to drone less than most options.

 

[Clint Beastwood]

Literally the ONLY thing that bothers me about the Thermal exhaust. I thought I was weird for having that gripe lol

I’ll still end up buying it though 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yeah I wish they'd v-banded it. I even have my stock exhaust v-banded, so when I swap exhausts there's no cutting, I can swap whatever arrangement I'm testing that day onto the car, drive around with instruments recording sound, then swap back to stock. The sleeved fittings like the thermal has are nice when you need to fart around with alignment of tips and so on. I've bought v-band exhausts for other cars that didnt fit right and you really have no adjustment other than rotation. *that* was annoying, packing an entire exhaust system up to ship back sucks

 

[Old Mike Emerson]

Having done tons of instrumented testing on FiST exhaust, and exhaustively (lol) digging in to how each company engineers their exhaust, Thermal and CP-E are the only ones I found that were actually "engineered" for the car, vs using off the shelf parts to fab a system. Between the two, the Thermal's a little better engineered, with it's integrated quarter wave resonator doing a great job of canceling the 106hz hum so endemic to 3" exhaust on a FiST. The CP-E is barking up the right tree, but I think their helmholtz chamber is a little undersized.

I haven't been able to get hands on with a Flowmaster system, but the couple I've heard sound like they don't drone much - but Flowmaster isn't really known for their engineering of sport compact exhaust, I can't find any indication of actual drone cancellation but it really does seem to drone less than most options.

So Thermal would be your choice?

 

[Dpro]

So Thermal would be your choice?

Thermal is the choice of a lot of us. He basically spent the price of a thermal designing one just like the thermal for the sake of experimentation and then realized he could have just bought a Thermal.

 

[Clint Beastwood]

So Thermal would be your choice?

Yeah pretty much, from at least what I could tell, they were the ones that put the most "engineering" into their exhausts. Aftermarket exhausts usually fall into two buckets:

1. A bunch of parts connected by tubing that changes the noise level of a car's engine, and that's just fine if it's what you like. Think MBRP - a couple of random off the shelf mufflers/resonators connected by piping that vaguely resembles the shape of the exhaust path under the car. There can be really really nice systems that fall into this bucket, but they don't factor in any acoustic "tuning", they just use standard exhaust components to vent exhaust gases from the engine out the back - though sometimes in very well built ways.
2. A thoroughly engineered system - where they calculate things like scavenging, exhaust velocity, turbulence, and acoustic adjustment and harmonic mitigation. The CP-E, and especially the thermal fall into this bucket. For how well it limits drone, the flowmaster might actually fall into this bucket, or perhaps their internal noise control was just a bob ross grade "happy little accident".

Thermal is the choice of a lot of us. He basically spent the price of a thermal designing one just like the thermal for the sake of experimentation and then realized he could have just bought a Thermal.

lol for real - I have spent the cost of several thermals basically replicating the thermal (in hindsight, I should have had all my "beta testing" fabricated in mild steel instead of t304 lol). I don't consider it money wasted (wife does!), because I was having fun figuring it all out and my geeky side enjoys (believe it or not!) doing all the math and making the spreadsheets. What I wound up at, at the end, was basically a thermal with much nicer welds and vbands instead of slip fits - but I could get away with that because it was built to fit on the car. I wound up giving all my old "beta" exhausts to the shop to cut up and use for other projects. Learned a lot in the process - if I didn't have the resources I do, I'd probably be pissed off at the wasted money, but I can advise others - just get the thermal. It's a lot like the... ARK? exhausts you can get on Z's, and the AWE tuning exhausts for VW's - both of those are pretty expensive, but employ the same acoustic cancellation processes as thermal. When compared to those, the thermal is a downright bargain.

 

[LiLfieSTa]

saw this video a long time ago and it made me interested in the scorpion before learning about the thermal. Lets not forget that the audio in the vid doesnt do ANY of the exhausts justice.

 

[Clint Beastwood]

saw this video a long time ago and it made me interested in the scorpion before learning about the thermal. Lets not forget that the audio in the vid doesnt do ANY of the exhausts justice.

The borla one... thats clearly not a 1.6 ecoboost, right?