Stereolab42

My mechanic is making it fit. He communicated with Meisterschaft over email/phone, sending them pictures. Their position appears to be that "we advertise it as fitting your model, but we don't actually mean it. If you can afford our products you're rich enough to pay hours of shop rate to a skilled welder to make it fit anyways". Didn't even offer to defray the cost. Not fun to have my car in the shop for a week just after buying it to fit a damn exhaust. It better actually work after being shoehorned in or my next call will be to my credit card company. If it does work and sounds great, I can forgive a lot, but woe is me if it doesn't.

LFC09

certainly leaves a nasty taste.....

AG6

Good to know. I probably wouldn't buy from a company like that.

Stereolab42

It is in, at last:



Sound quality is great with valves open, but still not as loud as I want... maybe 15% over stock (more at high throttle though). With valves closed it's definitely quieter than stock. Also, it didn't really save weight... the AMG exhaust is extremely light, I was shocked. If I choose to delete the resonators I think would have to go straight-pipe to guarantee a significant increase in volume, from what I've read. However I'm wary about pulsing/vibration issues (one member claimed he got terrible vibration in the car after the mod). Maybe it's best just to accept that I bought a Benz, not a Vette, and trying to make it sound like a Vette is not in the cards.

In summary, I probably wasted about $5000, but it sure is a good-looking $5000... at least from underneath the car.

PeterUbers

Congrats?

AG6

Looks good. Any videos?

Stereolab42

Wouldn't be much point since it doesn't sound terribly different from stock unless you go near WOT. It might be getting louder as it breaks in, but still maybe not more than 20% over.

I have found a good use for valves closed though... when I'm driving around my neighborhood catching Pokemon. Best to attract as little attention as possible when I'm parking outside somebody's house on a random street.

ucla95

LOL

AG6

With the valves closed is it quieter than stock or louder?

Edit, just read its quieter. I like the system, but not so much with the quality fitment issues.

Stereolab42

Significantly quieter. Turns out to be very useful; no guilt about going on midnight drives and annoying the neighbors. Real stealth-mode ****.

Stereolab42

Been to the local muffler shop twice over the past few days in the search for more sound... first attempt was replacing the res with an X-pipe:





Took only about an hour for the experienced guys at Mufflers Express in Redwood City (highly recommended). It resulted in an immediate weight savings of about 18 pounds, which is great (why are the stock resonators so damn heavy)? However, while the sound got a bit more aggressive and burbly, volume was still not there.

Went back the next day and got straights:



Now we're talking! Sound absolutely fantastic with a little throttle. With a lot of throttle and/or stationary revving it's apocalyptic -- think trumpets of death, snapping and popping, and so on. Cold start is awesome, and driving in a tunnel/garage is simply unreal. My biggest fear was vibration/rough idle. While you get a touch more vibration at idle/cruise, it's not really noticeable unless you're looking for it. This is with valves wide open, so I could do with even more volume in the knowledge that I can dial it down. But at least I know now that this is as loud as it gets without going catless... at open the Meisterschaft is almost completely straight through. I'll have to educate myself on downpipes/catless for the AWD and see if can be done in an easily swappable manner.

I just bought a GoPro and suction mount and will try to take some videos over the weekend. In the meantime I found a video which shows very closely what this sounds like. It's of an E63 with a Capristo exhaust. It's similar to the Meisterschaft but includes a res delete to straight pipes:

LFC09

very interesting; thanks for the experimentation and updates.

Stereolab42

Well that was fun. I used to be into murderously huge car audio systems, but with this car it's criminal to not leave the windows down and the sunroof open allll the time, for obvious reasons.