Ark Design RacingSpec Exhaust, twin exit, impressions

[H1C]

I've found tons of useful info here -- thank you everyone! -- but mostly lurk, as I don't feel like I have much useful to add. So I thought I'd try to give back in a small way by sharing a positive vendor experience I had and my impressions of this exhaust. Maybe someone with tastes similar to mine will find this helpful.

I looked for a long time for a cat-back for this car, and narrowed it down to two favorites based on the info I could find online: the Perrin 2.5" resonated and the Milltek 2.5" resonated. I liked these because they sounded clean and mature, aggressive enough, and not burbly. I'm not at all a fan of the Subaru UEL burble -- I much prefer the sound of Porsche's boxer engines. I wasn't crazy about the Perrin's flex bellow, though, and I found reports of potential cracking problems on the Milltek, so the search continued.

Then I came across these articles on MotoIQ:
http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticl...-Shootout.aspx
http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticl...c-Exhaust.aspx

After talking with a friend who's a very experienced track and autocross, and Japanese car, driver, who knows Mike Kojima and said he makes reliable recommendations, I decided to get this exhaust. My online searches didn't yield much though: Ark Design doesn't seem to have a US web presence, and my search results kept leading to Ark Performance, which I think is an unrelated company.

Then I found ModInJapan in the vendor classfieds here, who seems to be the only supplier of Ark Design exhausts in the US. I texted with Lou, the owner or sales manager, on a Friday, made the purchase, and had the exhaust by the following Tuesday.

So here are my impressions so far:

Vendor: 10/10. Lou answers texts/emails on evenings and weekends, shipped super quickly, and is very responsive to any questions/concerns.

Packaging: 7/10. The box was sturdy, but it was packed too loosely from the manufacturer. The pieces were individually foam-wrapped, but were able to hit each other during shipping. One of the mufflers arrived with a small dent as a result. Not a big deal, but it could have been avoided with tighter packaging.

Materials and finish: 10/10. This is a very well-constructed exhaust. The welds are very uniform and the polished SS304 has no obvious flaws or inconsistencies. This is as nice as any aftermarket exhaust I've seen.

Fit: 10/10. I was able to install this exhaust in the dark, by myself, with the car on jackstands. I was able to get it on the hangars, torque the nuts and line up the tips with no struggle at all. I already had an aftermarket header too, and installation went smoothly. I also very much like that the OEM donut gasket and springed bolts are re-used. That donut gasket seems like the best solution to prevent leak at a connection that looks like it could be prone to flexing and movement.

At first I thought mine hung a little low compared to the one in MotoIQ's pics, but after showing it to my auto-x buddies, they all thought it was fine: just a natural result of it having a larger mid-pipe. My previous car was rear-engined, so I never encountered this larger mid-pipe hanging-lower-than-stock issue before, when changing exhausts on that car.

Sound: 10/10. It's pretty deep, mellow and even quietly burbly when cruising at low speeds and revs. I know I said that I don't like the Subaru burble, but I don't mind it here. But when you get on it, it makes a ripping, angry howl. It cracks and pops when you shift near redline. With my aftermarket header and HFC front pipe, it can get pretty loud. But not obnoxiously so, except at cold-start (I had to tame the cold start with the OFT). In short, I think it sounds awesome.

Value: 10/10. I think at $599, this exhaust is a bargain.

Here are some under-car pics I took when changing wheels for an auto-x this past weekend, and some in-car from the auto-x. The wind noise sucks, but you can sort of get an idea of what it sounds like. The audio does not do it justice.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9lvZoknh54"]Peachtree BMWCCA Auto-X 5, 10/01/2017, Run 5 - YouTube[/ame]

The rest of my exhaust setup:
K&N panel filter
Tomei EL header
Motiv Concepts HFC front pipe