Hello Everyone,
I'm looking to upgrade the exhaust on my Monte Carlo for my first modification. The car is a stock 2000 with the 3800 engine. My main goal with a new exhaust system is to make the car sound like a classic muscle car. A deep rumble at idle basically. Here's a video with about the same type of sound I'm looking for: In case the video doesn't play at the right time, the second sound clip is what I'm going for. The first clip sounds a bit "hollow" to me, for the lack of a better word. I would like to bolt on a complete system myself, with a budget of about 600-800$. I've done a little bit of research, and I think I want to go with a 2.5" system, headers, and all the other stuff. I haven't decided on a brand for the cats and mufflers yet, but I've looked at Flowmaster the most. I'm also not 100% sure if i'm going to go with headers. I do want to squeeze out any extra performance I can get with this upgrade as a whole, but I've seen others talk about the hp and torque gains being very minimal. Also, this upgrade does still need to pass Texas emissions regulations (Tarrant County), as my Monte Carlo is my daily driver. Any advice or recommendations are appreciated.

 

It's a V6, you're never going to get it to sound like a V8. Might as well leave it stock.

 

I completely agree. Have you tried searching 3800 exhaust setups on youtube to get an idea of what it could sound like?

You'll never get anywhere near a classic muscle car sound on a 3800, just like itll never sound like a Honda 4 cyl. It's just a very different engine setup and exhaust routing. Unfortunately, the 3800 is also notorious for lots of drone and sounding terrible in general.

 

I'm aware that the engine in the video is different, and thus sounds different. I was simply giving an example of the type of sound I'd like to achieve.

Here's a 3800 exhaust setup that is exactly what I'm looking for:
The next comment would be, "then just do that." I'd like to first get other people's opinions, advice, and just strike up conversation about the topic, to learn more. While I could simply copy the setup from the video, there's still unanswered questions I have. Like:
-Should I add headers?
-If yes, whats the best one to go with?
-Should I update my cat?
-Would I see a worth while amount of performance increase with headers and high flow cats?
-Can I do all of this while still meeting emissions regulations?

 

A lot of great questions there.
What I have seen, if you get rid of the resonator and the mufflers you should get that kind of sound. Headers may help but could be a cost factor. You may see about getting into 3 inch dia. pipe. Sometimes if you have an exhaust shop in your town they might be able to refer you to the best application. Also check the youtube videos to see what some of the other applications have done.

However when you get the sound you really like from the V-8 the difference is each side of the engine is exhausted all the way back to the rear of the car. It appears that doing it with our V-6's is not an option.

In playing around with exhaust over the years with the V-8 it seems that the larger dia. pipes made for a deeper sound.

Some of the new Mustangs, Challenger's, & Camaro's have some great sounding exhaust.
No science in my response just an experience.

 

My point in bringing it up is a lot of people on the various wbody forums ask for a v8 like sound, then dump a bunch of money into exhaust and end up unhappy with the typical nasty 3800 sound. As long as you know what you're getting into, then more power to you!

To get the most muscular sound, I would. Thr downside is that it's going to be very hard to do head to tip exhaust in your budget unless you buy cheap stuff.

There are some options out there for cheap Chinese ones up to TOG Extremes. Usually NA cars used to always go with S&S due to the 1.5" primaries, but those haven't been made in a long time.
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Many headers come with a test pipe to delete the cat. You can add a cat, but again that's going to eat into your budget even more.

I wouldn't worry about performance at all. You're not really going to gain much of anything NA, especially considering all of the money you'll dump into doing full exhaust.

Catback stuff won't impact emissions. However, youll need an actual cat to legitimately pass if you start messing with downpipe/ headers. There are of course workarounds.

 

Could you elaborate on that? I don't quite understand what you mean.

 

What he's getting at is that the cars you're posting most likely have a true dual exhaust where each bank of cylinders has its own pipe run out the back of the car (with or without a connecting pipe between the two somewhere in between). On these cars, the front bank pipe connects in to the rear header / manifold, and then all of the exhaust pulses travel together down a single pipe to the rear of the car.

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Heres my car, it's got a front plog from zzp, a 3" downpipe with a gutted cat, no mufflers and a glasspack in place of the resonator. Glasspack tends to help reduce some of the raspiness these cars have. It does drone like crazy though.

 

Did you install the stuff yourself?