Thought I'd give everyone an update. I decided to be the guinea pig on this one.
Since the resonator should be as close to the end of the exhaust tail pipe as possible, and since there's not much room to work with on a straight shot exhaust, I found one muffler that could possibly fit.
What I ended up going with was a Jones Exhaust A4312B glass pack muffler. It sells new thru Summit racing for $23.95 at the time of this writing. Here's what it actually looks like:
And here's the link to the info for it:
Jones Exhaust A4312B - Jones Glasspack Mufflers - Overview - SummitRacing.com
It's a short at 12 inches long total. Unlike most glass packs, this one does not the extending ends past the case; instead the pipe slips into the ends of the muffler.
Here's the inside shots. This is a 3 inch muffler, the louvers I would guess are maybe 3/16 of an inch tall. I don't know how much power, if any this would hold back.
For trial testing purposes, I just shoved the muffler on the end of the tail pipe.
On a permanent install on a straight shot set up, I would say this muffler would fit ok between the bend in the pipe off the axle clearance to the 45 degree outbound tail pipe...and where the bracket is welded on the end of the pipe to bolt it to the frame. (there's roughly 13 inches of pipe there to work with)
So the results...?
Well it's still loud, and you can still hear the exhaust inside the car....however this glasspack DID take off the edge of the drone some....meaning inside the car it wasn't as bad as without it. No it doesn't completely eliminate the drone, but I will say this...when the drone does kick in, and without this muffler, I can usually tell you without having to look at a tachometer, the rpms are between 1900-2100 rpms (the "drone zone")...with this glasspack on I had a hard time telling where the rpms were, because it actually quieted down the buzzing droning sounds...all that's left is the rumble of a V6.
I will say the car is more livable now with this added on, as opposed to not having it at all. I would certainly be willing to drive this car more often with this mod. However as mentioned (and I know it's been said glasspacks are restrictive due to the popped up louvers) I don't know how much performance this would choke, if any at all.
I didn't get any sound clips and I'm not so sure they would have revealed anything since the difference was so minute, but noticeable. So the verdict is in...if you want to keep your straight shot exhaust but are tired of the drone and don't mind spending under $30 and can weld this inline with the tail pipe, this muffler just might be your answer.
