I purchased the exhaust from Alex Viscarra, the U.S. GruppeM distributor. Cost was $2700 delivered to my door.
Build Quality
Build quality appears to be top notch. Out of the box, the stainles steel twin canisers and exhaust tips were as shinny as a mirror. The connecting pipes were smoothly bent but left unpolished. Welds were neat, clean, and even.
Installation
As you can see, the Gruppe M V2 exhaust requires removal of both catalytic converters. A single piece bypass pipe is
provided that takes the two pipes and combines them into one. Then the single pipe splits back in two, one going to each of the canisters.
Installation was straightforward and took only a couple hours. The most difficult part was removing the rusted nuts holding the catalytic converters and old exhaust in place. Ended up having to use an impact wrench with a universal joint to remove them. Once past this hurdle, the new exhaust was quickly aligned and bolted down. The exhaust included brand new bolts and nuts to which we applied liberal amounts of anti-sieze before inserting and tightening down.
After installation the exhaust tips were perfectly centered. But after a a brief drive I noticed the whole unit had shifted towards the driver's side of the car. Checking again a little later, it had continued to shift. It eventually stopped, but only 2mm away from the touching the plastic valance. Several weeks later I have yet to melt any plastic, but I am a little concerned.
I'm not sure what the GruppeM exhaust weighs, but when I lifted the stock exhaust off the car I couldn't believe how heavy it felt. The stock exhaust must weigh at least twice that of GruppeM's.
Looks
The exhaust sports two large dual tips at each end. These fill the exhaust holes on the NSX's rear valance more fully giving
the car's rear end a much improved look. Personally, I like the look better than any of the other NSX exhausts I've seen.
Sound
The sound changes tone at various rpm's, adding to the character of the sound. Here's the sound from about 10 feet behind the car while revving the engine: <a href="http://www.nas.com/~barryb/gruppe_m.mp3">GruppeM MP3</a>
I will try and post further sound files (heavy acceleration, inside car, alongside road, etc...) once I figure out how to best record them.
<u>Idle</u>
Ultra low and authoritative. Sounds like a big engine, but without the annoying uneven, spurty noise most big American engines make. Nice.
<u>1000-2000 rpm</u>
Usually very quiet in this range
<u>2000-3000 rpm</u>
Lots of low frequency resonance. Enough so that it sometimes causes things to vibrate inside the cabin. (That never happened with the stock exhaust.) None of my passangers have ever compalined about it, so it must not be too obnoxious. One person even commented that they "liked" the resonance. I guess I'm just overly sensitive to it.
<u>3000-3500 rpm</u>
Relatively quiet in this range while cruising at 70 mph. Perfect for highway driving. The car is still usable for long trips without getting a headache from the droning exhaust. Perfect!
<u>3500 - 5000 rpm</u>
Sound changes to a higher-pitched, sharper shrill tone. In this range the exhaust shreak is so awesome that I find myself constantly trying to keep my rpm's in this range. There is a menancing sharpness to the tone here that you have to stand behind the car in person to appreciate (the MP3 file I made doesn't do it justice).
Besides the exhaust, the other "sound maker" I have on my car is the Gruppe M carbon fiber intake. Under heavy acceleration in this rpm range, the two units harmonize together to produce a sound that is very reminicant of an F355. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I can't help but think Gruppe M designed it this way on purpose. Anyway, the sound in this rpm range is beautiful and makes me want to accelerate even harder!
<u>Above 5000 rpm</u>
The sound continues to have a high pitched tone, but starts to lack the piercing sharpness that was present at 3500 rpm. It would be nice if that menacing sound continued all the way to redline, but it doesn't. The sound still sounds nice in this range, but lacks the awesomeness experienced just moments ago at lower RPM. It's a relative kind of thing.
Loudness
The loudness of the unit is perfect to me. Before buying the unit I was afraid it might be too loud, but the volume level is quite mellow from inside the car with the windows rolled-up.
With the windows rolled-down is an entirely different matter. While driving through downtown I can hear the exhaust note richocheting against the buildings and other cars. Pedestrians turn around and look at me long before I appoarch them. Obviously this is a fairly loud exhaust! And if I quickly rev the engine as I pass by someone on the street, they're almost guarenteed to spin around and look. For the first couple days after I got the exhaust installed, I couldn't help but keep doing that as I drove past people-- it was just so damn cool sounding and made me feel like a little kid playing with his toy Ferrari!
Performance
Compared to the factory exhaust, my car now feels slightly more powerful with the Gruppe M exhaust installed. This is entirely subjective and I have no dyno results to back it up with. However, I did not get this sensation after installing the Gruppe M intake.
Here is my NSX looking out over the ocean islands of Puget Sound after having worked hard making glorious sound along the cliffs of Chukanut Drive. While parked here I even got several comments from other cars who'd stopped to enjoy the view about how good my car "sounded". Never had that happen before!
This exahust adds a lot of excitement to an already good drive, making it that much better.
[This message has been edited by BB (edited 14 May 2001).]
Build Quality
Build quality appears to be top notch. Out of the box, the stainles steel twin canisers and exhaust tips were as shinny as a mirror. The connecting pipes were smoothly bent but left unpolished. Welds were neat, clean, and even.
Installation
As you can see, the Gruppe M V2 exhaust requires removal of both catalytic converters. A single piece bypass pipe is
provided that takes the two pipes and combines them into one. Then the single pipe splits back in two, one going to each of the canisters.
Installation was straightforward and took only a couple hours. The most difficult part was removing the rusted nuts holding the catalytic converters and old exhaust in place. Ended up having to use an impact wrench with a universal joint to remove them. Once past this hurdle, the new exhaust was quickly aligned and bolted down. The exhaust included brand new bolts and nuts to which we applied liberal amounts of anti-sieze before inserting and tightening down.
After installation the exhaust tips were perfectly centered. But after a a brief drive I noticed the whole unit had shifted towards the driver's side of the car. Checking again a little later, it had continued to shift. It eventually stopped, but only 2mm away from the touching the plastic valance. Several weeks later I have yet to melt any plastic, but I am a little concerned.
I'm not sure what the GruppeM exhaust weighs, but when I lifted the stock exhaust off the car I couldn't believe how heavy it felt. The stock exhaust must weigh at least twice that of GruppeM's.
Looks
The exhaust sports two large dual tips at each end. These fill the exhaust holes on the NSX's rear valance more fully giving
the car's rear end a much improved look. Personally, I like the look better than any of the other NSX exhausts I've seen.
Sound
The sound changes tone at various rpm's, adding to the character of the sound. Here's the sound from about 10 feet behind the car while revving the engine: <a href="http://www.nas.com/~barryb/gruppe_m.mp3">GruppeM MP3</a>
I will try and post further sound files (heavy acceleration, inside car, alongside road, etc...) once I figure out how to best record them.
<u>Idle</u>
Ultra low and authoritative. Sounds like a big engine, but without the annoying uneven, spurty noise most big American engines make. Nice.
<u>1000-2000 rpm</u>
Usually very quiet in this range
<u>2000-3000 rpm</u>
Lots of low frequency resonance. Enough so that it sometimes causes things to vibrate inside the cabin. (That never happened with the stock exhaust.) None of my passangers have ever compalined about it, so it must not be too obnoxious. One person even commented that they "liked" the resonance. I guess I'm just overly sensitive to it.
<u>3000-3500 rpm</u>
Relatively quiet in this range while cruising at 70 mph. Perfect for highway driving. The car is still usable for long trips without getting a headache from the droning exhaust. Perfect!
<u>3500 - 5000 rpm</u>
Sound changes to a higher-pitched, sharper shrill tone. In this range the exhaust shreak is so awesome that I find myself constantly trying to keep my rpm's in this range. There is a menancing sharpness to the tone here that you have to stand behind the car in person to appreciate (the MP3 file I made doesn't do it justice).
Besides the exhaust, the other "sound maker" I have on my car is the Gruppe M carbon fiber intake. Under heavy acceleration in this rpm range, the two units harmonize together to produce a sound that is very reminicant of an F355. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I can't help but think Gruppe M designed it this way on purpose. Anyway, the sound in this rpm range is beautiful and makes me want to accelerate even harder!
<u>Above 5000 rpm</u>
The sound continues to have a high pitched tone, but starts to lack the piercing sharpness that was present at 3500 rpm. It would be nice if that menacing sound continued all the way to redline, but it doesn't. The sound still sounds nice in this range, but lacks the awesomeness experienced just moments ago at lower RPM. It's a relative kind of thing.
Loudness
The loudness of the unit is perfect to me. Before buying the unit I was afraid it might be too loud, but the volume level is quite mellow from inside the car with the windows rolled-up.
With the windows rolled-down is an entirely different matter. While driving through downtown I can hear the exhaust note richocheting against the buildings and other cars. Pedestrians turn around and look at me long before I appoarch them. Obviously this is a fairly loud exhaust! And if I quickly rev the engine as I pass by someone on the street, they're almost guarenteed to spin around and look. For the first couple days after I got the exhaust installed, I couldn't help but keep doing that as I drove past people-- it was just so damn cool sounding and made me feel like a little kid playing with his toy Ferrari!
Performance
Compared to the factory exhaust, my car now feels slightly more powerful with the Gruppe M exhaust installed. This is entirely subjective and I have no dyno results to back it up with. However, I did not get this sensation after installing the Gruppe M intake.
Here is my NSX looking out over the ocean islands of Puget Sound after having worked hard making glorious sound along the cliffs of Chukanut Drive. While parked here I even got several comments from other cars who'd stopped to enjoy the view about how good my car "sounded". Never had that happen before!
This exahust adds a lot of excitement to an already good drive, making it that much better.
[This message has been edited by BB (edited 14 May 2001).]
