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Borla Exhaust on the 96 SHO

Thanks to Bill Moore (AKA Big Dog):


 
Yesterday I had the NEW Borla cat back system installed on my 96 SHO.  This is the new system, not the original SHO system that only seemed to produce noise.  Borla says their flywheel dyno test SHOwed a 53 hp gain with their system.  I won't know what
the actual wheel horsepower gain will be until NeSHOc holds their next Dyno Day.  My installer suspects it may be something like 28 hp.

Here's my initial impressions:

1-  The car sounds sweet-  I drove ~80 mph with the AWA and was able to hold a nice conversation without our eardrums being assaulted.  I didn't tell my wife about the change and she noticed the difference.  She laughed when I told her what I had done.  She's convinced it's a boy thing.  The noise level was an initial concern I had as I take clients out and need to be able to converse with them.  That is not a problem with this system.

2- The computer wasn't reset after installation so the chip tried to figure out what was going on.  The performance was flukey in the beginning.

3-  I had the cats drilled out and I don't know how this may have effected the Borla performance.  My guess is it couldn't have hurt.

4-  The idle is much smoother.  It seems the engine is breathing well.

5-  It's been raining here since the install :'-(   So I haven't had the opportunity to road test it yet.  The computer is much less erratic now.

6-  It sounds sweet.  It reminds me of my Boss 351Mustang.  It definitely say 'something is going on under the hood.'  People have noticed.  One person even stated it didn't sound like a Taurus.  Of course, I never thought it did.  I can make the SHO talk when
I want to or I can travel down the road in a semi-quiet mode if necessary.

FYI-  mods to my SHO:  26mm swaybar,  suspension switch, Yoko AVS Sports, SHOshop airbox, Optima red top battery, Borla cat back exhaust.  (On back order- UDP's)

Summary-  I'm glad I went with the Borla system.

 


Update- Hey guys, thanks for your advice with the UPS station. It's really weird what happened with my Borla exhaust system, but they found it today. From what UPS said, all though the computer showed that the system was lost in IL somewhere, they had somehow delivered it accidentally to some elderly lady on the other side of the city. As soon as I got it this morning, I went and had it installed. After it was installed and fired up, the sound quality is simply unreal! I never knew that a small 3.4 Liter V8 could sound so good! It sounds just as good as a Mustang 5.0 does. I simply cannot describe the beauty of the exhaust note! What's surprising, is that the exhaust isn't much louder than stock. It's noticeable, but not enough to assault your eardrums. Just to make Ron happy, yes I did notice a slight loss in low rpm torque, but the butt dyno says it feels much slightly faster after 3400rpms than before. One thing that I'm disappointed about this exhaust system, is that to accommodate the dual pipes, it sits much lower than the stock exhaust system does and kind of kills ground clearance. I have a steep driveway, and I heard the Borla slightly scraping the ground as I pulled in. Also, another thing I don't like are those huge ricey looking exhaust tips.

Thanks to June H. Han

 



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