In this installment we test a Scorpion exhaust system from Bavarian Autosport, which is seen here nestled inside the Khoalty carbon fiber rear diffuser.
Project M3: Part 15 – More exhaust testing and weight reduction
Today we move onto a new exhaust system we got for the car. Until now the car had been expelling exhaust fumes through a Magnaflow exhaust, which took care of sections 1 thru 3 of the exhaust system (in other words, header-back). Don’t get us wrong—for a car with factory headers and cats, this exhaust is great in both looks, sound, and a little bit of weight loss. For a car like ours, however, which runs VAC headers, it wasn’t the right combination.
The reason was more about the drone between 2200-2700 RPM. It’s a small window, but an often-visited one. Yes, we could have tried having Modified by KC weld on some dead-end, drone cancellation pipes to cancel out those frequencies, but it was going to be a trial and error labor that we couldn’t coincide the time for. We may still try something like this in the future, but for now we wanted to find something off the shelf which could work for the average Joe running a similar header set up.
So we contacted Bavarian Autosport. Until now, Bav Auto has primarily been our go-to place for factory parts—after all, they’re practically the cheapest around and been around so long they’re great to deal with. These guys do sell a lot of other performance parts, however. Two of them we’re featuring today—the Megan Racing section 1 and 2 performance mid-pipe and the Scorpion Exhaust Systems section 3 muffler. Bavarian Autosport happens to be the master importer of the latter.
Please note, as mentioned in Part 14, the car has been baseline-tested with the Megan Racing performance mid-pipe already on the car due to time constraints. In this part we will be dyno-testing the rear muffler only.
The Megan Racing sections 1 and 2 Performance mid-pipe from Bavarian Autosport features two resonators. The factory unit only has one resonator on one side. It retails $688 from Bavarian Autosport and was designed to be a direct O.E. replacement.
We’re also testing the Scorpion exhaust from Bavarian Autosport. The company happens to be the master importer of Scorpion Exhaust Systems. It retails $599. It, too, is a direct replacement to the O.E. unit.
When compared to stock, the Section 2 portions of the exhaust look similar, except for the small resonator on the factory unit and the H crossover. We’ve decided to measure and weigh everything for you.
