I had about 30,000 miles on my PDK base cayman before I upgraded to another manufacturer’s valved exhaust for my car. I did a lot of research and was assured by my salesperson that the drone would be minimal. After the installation, the exhaust sounded pretty badass, but the drone was pretty bad– especially with all the highway driving I was doing at the time. I decided to do a few more upgrades and got the accessport, plenum, bmc air filters, pro tune, and catless headers from the same vendor. There were a few installation.. err.. surprises, but after everything was said and done– the car sounded wild Pros: Noticeable power improvement, loud enough to rev the engine and cars in front of me would move out of the way. Sounded like a GT Cup Car. Cons: Catless headers, so would not pass emissions; and the big one: too loud. Yes, with the valves open, it was too loud to drive with. The level of noise was so loud that with the windows down– my hearing would start to sound muffled. Mind you– i’m under 30 years old. But the worst issue: the drone. The vavled exhaust had it’s own drone, but now with the headers, the overall volume was significantly louder. The drone was obnoxious and not livable. After about 3,000 miles with that setup, I changed the exhaust AND headers. — I’m now running the Soul Performance valved exhaust and the street headers with cats. I had the installation done at Soul’s HQ and I had ZERO issues. The valved exhaust has more of a throaty, deeper tone and sounds more like a luxury exotic than a cup car. Personally, I greatly prefer this. With the valves open, it’s still very loud– but in a good way. I have been getting a lot of “thumbs up” from fellow motorists– something I did not get before with the other setup. The headers give my butt dyno a little more torque in lower revs vs the catless headers– which is nice for street driving. The absolute selling point, however, is the lack of drone. With the valves closed, the car is far more civilized and there is almost no drone whatsoever. I wish this exhaust would have been available two years ago, because I would have bought it then. No check engine lights, no drone, just a superior product from a company who doesn’t just talk about customer service– they actually come through.
