TRD300 Project (Pic Heavy)

[Kestrel]

A month or so ago I was pumping gas after doing a little spirited driving and I look over to see a Firestorm FR-S make a turn and go WOT right by me. I made a note of A) How much better his car sounded than mine and B) Two little D-shaped exhaust tips sitting in his bumper. I decided that if I had the chance I'd upgrade to the TRD cat back.



THE VERY NEXT DAY I get a response to one of my craigslist ads saying that they had a TRD muffler to trade. We make arrangements and I end up with...




This... Ok, no mid pipe, but I figured I could work around that. The worst part....



The guy chopped the hangers off! I don't understand the mentality of "Let me hack up this thousand dollar factor option instead of popping it out of the hangers!" but it happened.



Oh yeah, he chopped off the mid pipe too! But hey, that makes my job a LITTLE easier. The quest begins!

So I order some stainless exhaust hangers from Summit



And then bent them, torch style.



I still needed a mid pipe. They do not sell the TRD mid pipe separately so I had to do a bit of research. I noticed that the Invidia Q300 has a mid pipe that enters the muffler very much like the TRD....but again, they don't sell the mid pipe separately and I wasn't about the buy the whole kit. Luckily for me another member on the forum was selling the Q300 mid pipe and the Invidia front pipe for a good price. For about $300 shipped I had what I needed to move this project along.

Welded on and test fit





Ok...bit of a gap here...

After a bit of brainstorming I came up with this



4" long Vibrant Performance flexy bit.

And after a bit of toiling I ended up with...



Install checklist:
TRD Muffler - Free
Exhaust hangers - $30
Invidia Front and Midpipe - $300
Resisted the urge to install the front pipe and instead sold it - +$150
Vibrant Performance flex joint - $30
Total: ~$210



Here's an amazingly high quality (rushed before work unfocused cell phone quality!) cold start and rev video.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5KhfR6jcwQ"]TRD300 Cold Start - YouTube[/ame]

And look at that clearance!



I'm very happy with the result. It sounds worlds different, with a much deeper tone at idle and lower revs while not adding more volume than stock. I believe it may be more quiet than the standard TRD cat back with the quite large Invidia resonator, but who knows.

I believe this is the right forum for this post as it's not quite a DIY, but move it if need be. Just thought I'd share my little experiment and maybe inspire some of you to go out and make stuff happen.

[Kenny_LongWrench]

Nice work and way to be resourceful! Sounds great.