Hello all! First of all let me say i've been reading this forum for a few months now and want to thank you all for teaching me so much about corvettes. Like many of you, I grew up dreaming of owning a corvette, and I am now in the financial position where I believe I can reasonably afford to actually buy one. I have been looking at the For Sale section of this board for some time now, and it seems a budget of $20k (and maybe a smidge over that) will get me into a well-maintained coupe without too many miles. I have been mainly looking at 01-04s, since they have all the updates, and I really don't want to get into a 10+ year old car. If you don't mind though, I've got a couple questions for you all...

This car will be a daily driver for me. I do not plan on doing any sort of organized racing with it, or any really hard driving in general. Some of the cars I have been looking at have a few mods. Minor mods like intakes or axle-back exhausts don't really worry me, but one car I am looking at that I particularly like has LG street long-tube headers, cat-delete, straight tube exhaust, and and ECS tune. The owner has assured me that, should I desire to, it would be no problem to add cats and mufflers to make the car more daily driver friendly.

My questions: if i were to install cats and swap in a Z06 titanium exhaust, what kind of sound would I expect to get from it? The other question be would I be 100% able to pass NJ inspection in this configuration? I believe there is some issue with long-tube headers and relocating cats that can cause you to fail? Does the ECS tune have any potential reliability issues(particularly long term ones)? I'm not willing to trade reliability for a few extra horsepower. Has anyone here put 20, 50, 100k miles on a car with one of these tunes?

Thank you all for your help. I hope to be joining you as a fellow corvette owner soon.

 

Z06 exhaust is louder than most stock cars but is quiet compared to most aftermarket setups. You should be fine with a Z06 cat back.

 

I would only be worried about passing emissions. I don't know how strict they are up there but you could probably take it to a muffler shop and have them throw what you need in there.

Doing intake/exhaust and tune are some of the healthiest and quality upgrades out there. I wouldn't be worried about the longevity of the tune...

Some people are putting 750 plus horsepower on these motors with bolt on's and tunes, they can handle being opened up a little with no problem.

 

keep um stock

 

if i remember correctly nj has some pretty strict regulations. the headers will probably be the problem even adding everything else stock from there back. as someone previously mentioned, a discussion with a qualified muffler shop owner or manager would be in order to get a better read on what will and won't work if you don't want to go back to 100% stock (even if it is 100% stock Z06 which would be legal)

 

I had a C5 coupe with a Blackwing CAI, Corsa cat-back, and AR headers with the high flow cats and an ECS tune. Never had an issue with NJ inspection. So if you are going to get cats and mufflers on, I think you'll be okay.

If you want to hear what it sounds like, right now I have a C5 Z06 with Blackwing, Kooks headers, and the stock Ti Exhaust with an ECS tune and am in South NJ. The car is my daily driver. ECS did all the work and the car drives fantastic. Doug at ECS is an excellent tuner.

Let me know...

Charlie

 

 

First off you need the cats. It won't pass any kind of legal inspection without them.

Long tube headers could be a problem getting the 02 sensors to work properly. Long tubes are usually sold with the disclaimer "for offroad use only".