430 anyone have or heard a challenge race exhaust on the 430

I picked up one for a crazy low price so I modified it to suit the Scuderia bumper. It sounded good but the drone was horrendous. It lasted all of a month.

 

I sent it for metal recycling as I couldn't imagine anyone else would be happy with it. When the assembly was cold all is well, but when warm you can forget cruising anywhere.

I see the main benefit is weight saving because it's slightly quieter than stock at high RPM and louder at low RPM. The Challenge car is catless, spends more time at high RPM, so the setup is ideal. For a road car it just isn't.

 

there is a 430 sport exhaust in the classifieds listed for $2,200. Better of going with that, no?

 

It's worth a try then. A few years ago a number of race teams were selling their spares packages after moving to 458s, so there was a glut of Challenge parts on eBay. I paid around $200 which was too good to pass up. It's worth keeping on eye on eBay unless you have another source.

 

Just curious about your system. My 430 had an S-Line on it when I bought it a few months and it had a very LOUD cabin drone at 3K rpm going down the freeway. I ended up taking it off and had the OEM muffler system (which also came with the car) installed. The car also has ceramic coated AP headers and I'm wondering it they caused more drone than usual, compared to running stock manifolds that have pre-cats.

 

Regarding the S Line I always thought it impossible that some bends welded together did not drone. It was too good to be true.

For anything other than a short drive or track day these cars needs a good resonator or a big silencer/muffler. On big road trips I'm sometimes in the seat for 7hrs at a time so drone is unacceptable.

 

mark what is your favorite exhaust setup for a street driven 360 and 430? headers/cats/mufflers
how about a money no object setup and one with a budget in mind?

 

F430
A good pair of 4-1 manifolds and ideally some sports cats. Stock rear. I prefer 4-1 to 4-2-1 manifolds for the more exciting power delivery. No drone due to stock rear.

Budget: AP or Top Speed manifolds.
Money no object: Supersprint (below) manifolds and cats, stock rear. These are stepped for increased performance and feature an over-sized collector and cat entry pipe. They are dyno proven and produce impressive gains. In my opinion the best on the market.
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Notes:
- A pre-07 F430 is louder than a post 07 due to engine differences;
- My last F430 (06) sounded great with Top Speed manifolds:


Scuderia
Budget: Stock. It's very good if a little on the heavy side.
Money no object: Capristo full system. Whilst I don't think the manifolds deserve the admiration they get - I find them quite average in terms of fabrication and build - the Scuderia system really is excellent. Capristo redesigned the cats to provide a near straight exit route from collector to tailpipe. When my car is hot the glowing red cats are visible at night (it also shoots blue flames). The power increase is dyno proven and noticeable. In terms of sound, it's very close to stock but a little louder and there's absolutely no drone.

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I did build a silenced x-pipe system for my current car and whilst I enjoyed it for a while, I started to miss the depth of the non x-pipe setup. The x-pipe was too 'tinny' for me and I also felt a drop in performance (purely subjective).