rtv900
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2021
- Messages
- 305
- Reaction score
- 109
- Points
- 43
So I just installed the Borla active valve exhaust. First impression was, why is GM the only company that can make a valved exhaust with a quiet side and a loud side. My Z06 sounds like a 1.8 liter NA camry with the valves closed and a supercharged V8 with them open. Absolutely perfect for either leaving a neighborhood really early or being on the highway and NOT wanting to hear the drone of a loud exhaust after an hour, and conversely WANTING it super loud when ripping it on back roads.
If I were to rate exhaust level from 1 to 10, one being NA base camry and 10 being straight pipes. I'd say factory stinger is a 2 with valves closed and a 4 valves open.
Borla is like a 6 valves closed and 7 valves open.
I also had the JUN BL, which was a 2 valves closed and 5 valves open.
Can't re-iterate enough my confusion of a company making a valved exhaust and having virtually no difference between the two versions because I KNOW it is possible to get it right since my corvette does it perfectly.
Sound quality isn't bad, a little raspy but similar to the JUN except a bit louder.
The tips are a solid 4 inches back from the actual rear of the car so I'm going to make extensions to see if that helps rasp, drone or whatever. Can't make it worse. Overall sound is fine other than the fact that somebody completely missed the boat on what a valved exhaust is supposed to achieve.
Install was fine but the directions regarding swapping the factory valve controllers was poor at best. The directions said to line up the spring on the controller with the slot on the new valve (same as factory design). No problem, except for the fact that the slot position vs controller is arbitrary and apparently the controller just rotates once active until it "keys" into the slot and then from there rotates between full closed and open no problem. (it must be able to continually spin until it finds its limits and there is NO WAY to do this manually, you must install it and connect to the car plug) One of mine lined up perfectly and the other was 90 degrees out of position so it absolutely, no chance would key in. I wasted almost an hour going back and forth between the factory valves and controllers on my stock system to try and figure out what I was doing wrong. . . .which turned out to be NOTHING. They simply won't line up in some cases and all you have to do is install the controllers and tighten them down and hook it up in place to the factory connection and let the valves cycle one time and they'll key themselves in. That one single sentence right there would have saved me an hour. Just one single sentence added to the SINGLE sentence they put in regarding the valves. This would have increased the entire length of the instructions from about 8 sentences to 9 along with about 5 pictures that were so small you can't see them anyway.
Last complaint is that Borla does not utilize the cross brace behind the differential like the factory system and the JUN system use, so there was no tab on the exhaust to bolt that brace to. Plus, Borla connections are just compression bands and not flanges like factory or JUN, so IMO they can't be as rigid since they're relying on nothing but friction in the joints to stop rotation. The mufflers want to sag down on the outside which pushes the pipes together near the diff. That's the whole point of the brace at that spot.
Bottom line I didn't have confidence they wouldn't be bouncing around like a shitbox so I brought them to work on Sunday and welded on two measly little tabs (as pics show) to re-use the factory brace. Now it's totally rigid but mind boggling they skimped on putting that little tab on there and basically rely on the torsional rigidity of 6 feet of thin tubing to prevent the mufflers from bouncing.
If I were to rate exhaust level from 1 to 10, one being NA base camry and 10 being straight pipes. I'd say factory stinger is a 2 with valves closed and a 4 valves open.
Borla is like a 6 valves closed and 7 valves open.
I also had the JUN BL, which was a 2 valves closed and 5 valves open.
Can't re-iterate enough my confusion of a company making a valved exhaust and having virtually no difference between the two versions because I KNOW it is possible to get it right since my corvette does it perfectly.
Sound quality isn't bad, a little raspy but similar to the JUN except a bit louder.
The tips are a solid 4 inches back from the actual rear of the car so I'm going to make extensions to see if that helps rasp, drone or whatever. Can't make it worse. Overall sound is fine other than the fact that somebody completely missed the boat on what a valved exhaust is supposed to achieve.
Install was fine but the directions regarding swapping the factory valve controllers was poor at best. The directions said to line up the spring on the controller with the slot on the new valve (same as factory design). No problem, except for the fact that the slot position vs controller is arbitrary and apparently the controller just rotates once active until it "keys" into the slot and then from there rotates between full closed and open no problem. (it must be able to continually spin until it finds its limits and there is NO WAY to do this manually, you must install it and connect to the car plug) One of mine lined up perfectly and the other was 90 degrees out of position so it absolutely, no chance would key in. I wasted almost an hour going back and forth between the factory valves and controllers on my stock system to try and figure out what I was doing wrong. . . .which turned out to be NOTHING. They simply won't line up in some cases and all you have to do is install the controllers and tighten them down and hook it up in place to the factory connection and let the valves cycle one time and they'll key themselves in. That one single sentence right there would have saved me an hour. Just one single sentence added to the SINGLE sentence they put in regarding the valves. This would have increased the entire length of the instructions from about 8 sentences to 9 along with about 5 pictures that were so small you can't see them anyway.
Last complaint is that Borla does not utilize the cross brace behind the differential like the factory system and the JUN system use, so there was no tab on the exhaust to bolt that brace to. Plus, Borla connections are just compression bands and not flanges like factory or JUN, so IMO they can't be as rigid since they're relying on nothing but friction in the joints to stop rotation. The mufflers want to sag down on the outside which pushes the pipes together near the diff. That's the whole point of the brace at that spot.
Bottom line I didn't have confidence they wouldn't be bouncing around like a shitbox so I brought them to work on Sunday and welded on two measly little tabs (as pics show) to re-use the factory brace. Now it's totally rigid but mind boggling they skimped on putting that little tab on there and basically rely on the torsional rigidity of 6 feet of thin tubing to prevent the mufflers from bouncing.
Last edited:
