Reading stuff, it seems alot of people say that you should never go under 3".

But what about a V6? I've heard plenty of people say that a 2 1/2" mandrel bent system should flow plenty for a V6. It's not going to turn into a strip car, so whats the verdict?

 

Its really up to you. A 2.5" dynomax system would probably flow fine for your 2.8. People say that 3" is overkill for my LO3, and I am definately pushing more air than the 2.8, so I imagine 3" would be overkill for you too. Is the car going to run bad? No, but you will probably loose significant low end torque, and only gain a little top end if any.

Here is a piece of advice. My last car was a 95 Monte FWD with the 3.1 v6. It came stock with single 2" exhaust. I took it to a shop, and the custom bent me a single 2.25" system, with a y-pipe in back and dual mufflers. Origionally, I had them install a 2.25" hi-flow cat, and a inline glasspack as a resonator, then 2 Dual Tip glasspacks on the back (straight thru). So, the system was rediculously low backpressure. I did notice the car pick up a little better on the highway at WOT, but the around town performance of the car went from mediocre to really bad. Any low end I had before vanished. The car was a dog, and with the loud mufflers you could hear it struggling too. I finally bought 2 chambered IMCO (like flowmaster) mufflers and put them on the back, and the little backpressure they provided brought back enough torque to make the car drivable. Also, with the new exhaust I lost 5-7 mpg. The exhaust started smelling like unburnt fuel too.

Another option is, summit sells the dynomax intermediate pipe seperately. You could get that, and have a shop fab that up to a 2.5 in/out flowmaster with custom tips if you really want that chambered sound. Another big favorite muffler for the V6 is magnaflow. Great quality, sounds good on a 6, and you could fab that onto the dynomax pipe too.

 

I would go 2.5"...

3" could always be upgraded later if you use forced induction