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It fits great, looks better and sounds good without attracting too much fuzz.
The original exhaust was restrictive (even with the holes!) and quite fugly. Also, the leaks made driving with the windows up unpleasant and dangerous.
You can get the parts separately, but it is far cheaper getting the kit. I got PN 17493, which includes the intermediate pipe and hanger, muffler, both tailpipes and three clamps. The left hanger and bolt are reused, as the tab on the tailpipe is made so that the original screw can self-tap into it. Almost every part house carries them, but Summit had free shipping ($202.97 plus tax).
Tail pipes aren't exactly factory looking, but the Dynomax kit is about as close as you're going to find to a factory replacement muffler/tail pipe assembly.
I have it on my 82 Recaro, and it is a nice fitting set up. I installed the 2.5 inch set up with a bigger cat and HO exhaust manifolds. The car definitely breaths better and sounds great too.
Bumping this old thread, I just had this same DynoMax 17493 kit put on my 305 TBI by the dealer this morning. The tailpipes are spot on and IMO are better fitting than stock, but I have to say I'm not thrilled with the slant of the muffler. Looking under the car, everything appears to be installed correctly and I don't see any way to adjust it. I also don't remember what the stock muffler looked like under the car, so maybe it was sort of slanted like that as well.
Update: I went outside and decided to play with it for an hour or so, was thinking if I pivoted the front of the muffler up towards the trunk floor I could pivot the passenger side tail pipe (and driver's side) down towards the ground a little to compensate and ensure the top of the passenger side tail pipe didn't hit the bottom of the intermediate pipe. Unfortunately there just isn't the clearance necessary to do that, it doesn't take much pivoting of the muffler upwards to result in a tailpipe that's halfway down to the ground at its highest possible point before hitting the intermediate pipe. If GM were smarter they would've had the intermediate pipe and passenger tail pipe positions on the muffler swapped. As it sits right now, the clearance between the tailpipe and the intermediate pipe is about 1/8" at the narrowest point, which hopefully is fine.
So basically it looks like the dealer installed it about as good as they could, there just isn't much adjustment you can make to this other than the tailpipes. I might have made a very small improvement in the muffler alignment, and I did tuck the tailpipes up just a wee bit more (note the first picture below is taken from a slightly lower vantage point than the pic in the previous post - look at the rear windshield). If nothing else I was able to put some blue Loctite on the muffler clamps and make sure they were all parallel to the ground (one originally was not). Tightened everything up a little bit more, had my wife come rev it to 4k and nothing was moving/shaking so I think I have this about as good as it's going to get. Overall happy I suppose, the tailpipes are the most important part. It's a pretty darn quiet system though, was expecting a LITTLE more sound, but that's ok. I've heard it takes time to break in and it gets louder, so we will see.
Looks better when you aren't bent all the way down looking under the car and are just looking at the back more naturally:
A good reason NOT to have the exhaust clamps sitting level is that they will hold water and rust away faster.
Nice looking car and the alignment of the muffler and tailpipes looks good to me.
A good reason NOT to have the exhaust clamps sitting level is that they will hold water and rust away faster.
Nice looking car and the alignment of the muffler and tailpipes looks good to me.
Thanks, I think it turned out about as good as it could, I just wanted a system that didn't have god-awful gaudy/tacky huge tips for the world to see. As for the clamps, not too worried about that since the car is never driven in rain, besides, if they rusted into place and held everything nice and tight right where it is that wouldn't bother me.
05-13-2015, 03:29 PM
