NXT Step Performance Exhaust and West Coast Corvette X-Pipe Review
12-13-2014, 11:19 PM
#1
NXT Step Performance Exhaust and West Coast Corvette X-Pipe Review
So last week I had a NXT-Step Performance Exhaust installed at a local muffler shop.
The exhaust itself looks and feels like it is of very high quality. It has nicely polished metals, quality looking welds, and it is much lighter than the stock exhaust. I know "eBay" or Asian exhaust components do not get too much respect in terms of quality, but this exhaust certainly looks the part, especially for its $600-$750 price point (depending on when you buy it on eBay)
When the shop fired up the exhaust it sounded very impressive. Loud, deep, and just very aggressive sounding. I've heard exhausts the sound like motorboats are turning on but on start up this exhaust sounds deep and full without being too low. Every time I have turned on my car to date I have loved the way it sounded.
I took the car on its way home and though I liked how it sounded on start-up and idle it sounded very drony at around 1500rpm and when opening the car up all the way to 6000rpm it didn't necessarily sound as bad *** as one would hope an aftermarket exhaust would sound, but it certainly sounded better and more fulfilling than the stock exhaust.
I got home and the first thing that I noticed is that the driver's side muffler went out of alignment and was sticking out about 2 inches past the body of the car, whereas the passenger side was completely flush and level. I'm really not sure if this is the exhaust's fault or the fault of the muffler shop but it was a major annoyance to find after just freshly installing a new exhaust.
I drove the car around for a week and it was honestly pretty painful. The drone at 1500rpm caused my ears to hurt, and though I loved the sound of the exhaust upon firing the car up, in general, the exhaust sounded a little too deep for a Corvette. To me the exhaust sounded much more like an aftermarket truck exhaust than a sports car exhaust.
So I spent the next few days researching drone and the various ways of fixing it. I know when I owned my 5th gen Camaro a lot of people felt like X-Pipes helped to reduce drone yet when I asked on this forum a lot of people said that they didn't help or do anything.
After one particularly painful car ride I decided to pull the trigger on a West Coast Corvette X-Pipe that I purchased from Corvette guys.
Now while waiting for the X-Pipe to arrive I was still nervous that things wouldn't improve even after installing the X-Pipe. I had a bunch of contingency plans in place, buying a Z06 Ti exhaust, going back to stock, returning the NXT Step for a Corsa, etc. Fortunately, after I put about 200 miles on the car the drone sounded much more manageable. I still wasn't 100% happy with the sound, but I was happy that the car didn't give me ear aches.
The X-Pipe arrived yesterday and my first impression was that it was a very high quality looking pipe. Nicely polished, welded well, and it felt slightly lighter than the stock pipe. In general, one would feel comfortable putting this X-Pipe on a Corvette. I decided to install the X-pipe myself since I have access to a set of concrete ramps at work which allowed me to get my car about 1 foot in the air.
Installation was fairly straightforward. Make your measurements, leave just a little extra pipe just in case, double check to make sure that your flanges match up and that you have all the hardware for the other side that bolts in to the axle side of the exhaust. I made my cut with a sawzall, had a bit of difficulty actually sliding the x-pipe onto the existing stock pipes, but that was because I needed to push my unbolted axle back system back just a little bit. After that things slipped on fairly easily and from there it was just a matter of re-bolting everything in.
Total install time took about 3 hours but that included a home depot run for a shorter sawzall blade, and about a half hour grabbing tools and stuff like that. I did have an extra set of hands and that helped quite a bit.
Anyways I turned the car on and things sounded absolutely wonderful. The deep full sound of the NXT Step exhaust now had a slightly higher tone in it somewhere and it sounded just a touch more exotic.
I then drove the car around for about 20 miles and it sounded MUCH better. Since the overall exhaust tone is a tad higher I feel like the exhaust sounds more appropriate for the Corvette. More importantly to me, the heavy vibrations that caused the unbearable drone are gone thanks to the higher tone.
Now you can still hear the engine working at 1500rpm so I wouldn't say that in my application the X-Pipe quieted the car down a whole lot, but I also heard the engine at 1500rpm on my stock system. The X-Pipe really did just change the harmonics and resonate frequencies of the exhaust thanks to how it made the tone a tad higher. To me the car just sounds much more appropriate, not embarrassingly deep, no intrusive vibrations/drone, but you can hear a nice full sounding engine every time you drive the car. My exhaust tips are still out of alignment, despite my best attempts to re-align them, so a trip to a different muffler shop is in order, but as far as I am concerned an X-Pipe certainly did help to tone down a droning exhaust and it did make a nice change in the exhaust note.
Some conclusions:
1) I hate buying exhausts and wish Chevy made the C5 with larger exhaust tips. I bought an exhaust for my Camaro because Chevy had a lame muffler for it and I bought a new exhaust for my C5 because Chevy put lame tips on the C5.
2) I still think spending $1,000+ on most of the other C5 exhausts is a little crazy, but at the $600 that I paid for the NXT step exhaust, plus $200 for muffler shop work, and another $300 for an X-Pipe I basically paid the same price anyway.
3) I emailed NXT-Step about the drone and they never got back to me. If it turns out my exhaust being out of alignment is because of some weird defect somewhere in the exhaust I really wouldn't recommend this exhaust to anyone else. But, considering the sound with an X-Pipe and how it looks when it's aligned, it is a lot of exhaust for the money.
4) I did actually feel a performance improvement with the NXT Step exhaust installed. The car seemed to feel a lot stronger above 3000rpm and accelerating from 60-80 felt a lot quicker. I haven't really felt any difference yet with the X-Pipe but I haven't exactly driven the car with it a whole lot. That said, I'm not expecting to feel much especially because of the improvement I felt with the NXT Step exhaust.
5) There's a difference between drone and a loud exhaust. Drone is basically feeling vibrations throughout the car because of the tone of the exhaust,and if the tone is deep enough these vibrations could really bother sensitive ears. I would say that I can definitely hear my exhaust now, but it's not obnoxious and it certainly isn't droney, it's just present.
6) Again, I really dislike buying exhausts for cars but always feel compelled to do so since Chevy really doesn't equip their performance cars with appropriate looking or sounding exhausts right from the factory. The C7 is an exception to this and the dual mode performance exhaust for the C6's is also an exception.
7) Here is a pic of the exhausts installed from an angle where you can't see the lack of alignment as much. To me it looks gorgeous.
The exhaust itself looks and feels like it is of very high quality. It has nicely polished metals, quality looking welds, and it is much lighter than the stock exhaust. I know "eBay" or Asian exhaust components do not get too much respect in terms of quality, but this exhaust certainly looks the part, especially for its $600-$750 price point (depending on when you buy it on eBay)
When the shop fired up the exhaust it sounded very impressive. Loud, deep, and just very aggressive sounding. I've heard exhausts the sound like motorboats are turning on but on start up this exhaust sounds deep and full without being too low. Every time I have turned on my car to date I have loved the way it sounded.
I took the car on its way home and though I liked how it sounded on start-up and idle it sounded very drony at around 1500rpm and when opening the car up all the way to 6000rpm it didn't necessarily sound as bad *** as one would hope an aftermarket exhaust would sound, but it certainly sounded better and more fulfilling than the stock exhaust.
I got home and the first thing that I noticed is that the driver's side muffler went out of alignment and was sticking out about 2 inches past the body of the car, whereas the passenger side was completely flush and level. I'm really not sure if this is the exhaust's fault or the fault of the muffler shop but it was a major annoyance to find after just freshly installing a new exhaust.
I drove the car around for a week and it was honestly pretty painful. The drone at 1500rpm caused my ears to hurt, and though I loved the sound of the exhaust upon firing the car up, in general, the exhaust sounded a little too deep for a Corvette. To me the exhaust sounded much more like an aftermarket truck exhaust than a sports car exhaust.
So I spent the next few days researching drone and the various ways of fixing it. I know when I owned my 5th gen Camaro a lot of people felt like X-Pipes helped to reduce drone yet when I asked on this forum a lot of people said that they didn't help or do anything.
After one particularly painful car ride I decided to pull the trigger on a West Coast Corvette X-Pipe that I purchased from Corvette guys.
Now while waiting for the X-Pipe to arrive I was still nervous that things wouldn't improve even after installing the X-Pipe. I had a bunch of contingency plans in place, buying a Z06 Ti exhaust, going back to stock, returning the NXT Step for a Corsa, etc. Fortunately, after I put about 200 miles on the car the drone sounded much more manageable. I still wasn't 100% happy with the sound, but I was happy that the car didn't give me ear aches.
The X-Pipe arrived yesterday and my first impression was that it was a very high quality looking pipe. Nicely polished, welded well, and it felt slightly lighter than the stock pipe. In general, one would feel comfortable putting this X-Pipe on a Corvette. I decided to install the X-pipe myself since I have access to a set of concrete ramps at work which allowed me to get my car about 1 foot in the air.
Installation was fairly straightforward. Make your measurements, leave just a little extra pipe just in case, double check to make sure that your flanges match up and that you have all the hardware for the other side that bolts in to the axle side of the exhaust. I made my cut with a sawzall, had a bit of difficulty actually sliding the x-pipe onto the existing stock pipes, but that was because I needed to push my unbolted axle back system back just a little bit. After that things slipped on fairly easily and from there it was just a matter of re-bolting everything in.
Total install time took about 3 hours but that included a home depot run for a shorter sawzall blade, and about a half hour grabbing tools and stuff like that. I did have an extra set of hands and that helped quite a bit.
Anyways I turned the car on and things sounded absolutely wonderful. The deep full sound of the NXT Step exhaust now had a slightly higher tone in it somewhere and it sounded just a touch more exotic.
I then drove the car around for about 20 miles and it sounded MUCH better. Since the overall exhaust tone is a tad higher I feel like the exhaust sounds more appropriate for the Corvette. More importantly to me, the heavy vibrations that caused the unbearable drone are gone thanks to the higher tone.
Now you can still hear the engine working at 1500rpm so I wouldn't say that in my application the X-Pipe quieted the car down a whole lot, but I also heard the engine at 1500rpm on my stock system. The X-Pipe really did just change the harmonics and resonate frequencies of the exhaust thanks to how it made the tone a tad higher. To me the car just sounds much more appropriate, not embarrassingly deep, no intrusive vibrations/drone, but you can hear a nice full sounding engine every time you drive the car. My exhaust tips are still out of alignment, despite my best attempts to re-align them, so a trip to a different muffler shop is in order, but as far as I am concerned an X-Pipe certainly did help to tone down a droning exhaust and it did make a nice change in the exhaust note.
Some conclusions:
1) I hate buying exhausts and wish Chevy made the C5 with larger exhaust tips. I bought an exhaust for my Camaro because Chevy had a lame muffler for it and I bought a new exhaust for my C5 because Chevy put lame tips on the C5.
2) I still think spending $1,000+ on most of the other C5 exhausts is a little crazy, but at the $600 that I paid for the NXT step exhaust, plus $200 for muffler shop work, and another $300 for an X-Pipe I basically paid the same price anyway.
3) I emailed NXT-Step about the drone and they never got back to me. If it turns out my exhaust being out of alignment is because of some weird defect somewhere in the exhaust I really wouldn't recommend this exhaust to anyone else. But, considering the sound with an X-Pipe and how it looks when it's aligned, it is a lot of exhaust for the money.
4) I did actually feel a performance improvement with the NXT Step exhaust installed. The car seemed to feel a lot stronger above 3000rpm and accelerating from 60-80 felt a lot quicker. I haven't really felt any difference yet with the X-Pipe but I haven't exactly driven the car with it a whole lot. That said, I'm not expecting to feel much especially because of the improvement I felt with the NXT Step exhaust.
5) There's a difference between drone and a loud exhaust. Drone is basically feeling vibrations throughout the car because of the tone of the exhaust,and if the tone is deep enough these vibrations could really bother sensitive ears. I would say that I can definitely hear my exhaust now, but it's not obnoxious and it certainly isn't droney, it's just present.
6) Again, I really dislike buying exhausts for cars but always feel compelled to do so since Chevy really doesn't equip their performance cars with appropriate looking or sounding exhausts right from the factory. The C7 is an exception to this and the dual mode performance exhaust for the C6's is also an exception.
7) Here is a pic of the exhausts installed from an angle where you can't see the lack of alignment as much. To me it looks gorgeous.
12-14-2014, 12:47 AM
#2
Melting Slicks
When i bought mine on ebay back when it was 350 shipped, the clamps that came with it were junk. If they didn't improve the clamps and you are using them, check them out cause you could have a broken one and your pipes loosened up on ya.
12-14-2014, 01:00 AM
#3
Thanks for the heads up. Yeah, it doesn't really seem like it's a clamp thing, more so no matter how I loosen/move the exhaust it doesn't want to square up like I want it to. I'm hoping somebody with a lift and some more experience might be able to do the trick haha.
12-15-2014, 02:20 AM
#4
Just took a 120 mile road trip today in the C5 and I'm loving the new exhaust setup. Mid-range torque with the X-Pipe feels to be much improved and you can fell the car pull more at around 2000-3000rpm whereas before it felt like you had to rev a little higher before it would start pulling as much.
With the X-Pipe changing the exhaust tone things don't sound at all obnoxious and my girlfriend actually commented to me "Hun I just heard you start up your car when you were dropping me off and it sounded great" and she is not at all a car person.
With the X-Pipe changing the exhaust tone things don't sound at all obnoxious and my girlfriend actually commented to me "Hun I just heard you start up your car when you were dropping me off and it sounded great" and she is not at all a car person.
12-15-2014, 08:58 PM
#5
Instructor
There is a 30 day money back guarantee from NXT step.. I used it and bought a Corsa exhaust... no way could we get mine to align. I did LOVE the sound tho.. better than the Corsa.. but probably because I can't hear the Corsa from inside the car. haha Everyone says it sounds great.. haha The Corsa lined up first time and has stayed straight.