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As featured in Part 2, our previous Corsa featured separate mufflers—one for each pipe…
…and two small individual resonators in Section 2. The extra resonator you see up front is the factory Section 1 piece that was retained with the Corsa.
Here is a close-up of the factory 2.25-in piping Section 1 that was retained with the Corsa system. It's interesting that BMW only resonated one side (that's not a catalytic converter).
Having tested Corsa exhaust systems on a few BMW M3s, I’ve always been happy with the build quality and construction. With my last E36 BMW M3, the Corsa exhaust system sounded great when it was the only exhaust modification. It wasn’t until we removed the cats on the E36 that the car grew obnoxiously loud, necessitating a switch to another rear muffler (a heavier Active Autowerke unit) to really quiet things down.
With our E46 M3, we’re faced with the same issue. While the Corsa system sounds awesome with the stock cats in place, it's simply too loud with our current VAC/Fabspeed headers (or any cat-delete headers, for that matter).
One of the fitment issues we had with Project E46 M3’s previous Corsa exhaust was the piping coming into contact with the metal chassis crossbar, which caused a small vibration. You can see Corsa flattened the piping there to clear it, but it still touched. However, a simple piece of silicone coupling did the trick.
