Can someone explain this to me? Don't you by law have to have a muffler. I am just curious, seen this modification a lot lately and just trying to learn the legalities of it.
Well finally got my Atlas steps on.
I went to a local body shop. They said getting those bolts out was a chore.
It depends on the State you live in. For instance, we still have a resonator upstream. That is also considered a muffler device. The turbo itself also muffles the exhaust note a bit. For all intents and purposes the Neon SRT4 was straight piped from the factory, however it had two inline resonators towards the front. It really comes down to semantics.
The way it was explained to me is that since you aren't removing the cat you're fine. As far as noise, as long as you have a resonator you're in good standing legally if anyone complained. The only other thing I would add is that prior to considering this I was looking at the rock basher from AFe and there was concern that if you lived somewhere that required smog testing, the exhaust had to 1. not be split meaning if it starts as one pipe it had to remain that way (I think meaning you couldn't bypass the cat) and 2. the exhaust had to terminate at the exterior of the vehicle for carbon monoxide concerns in addition to the technician being able to hook the equipment to the exhaust since he's not going to go crawling under the vehicle to find it. I chose this mod for all the above reasons in addition to not being obnoxiously loud and if I'm going to be using it offroad I didn't want to stick a $500 exhaust on it. It's a Jeep not a Maserati.
No. But I figure the steps will help me get up there to clean snow.
It comes down to what the Decibel Monitor says. Since what we hear is subjective, a number is used as a measurement. So many Decibels , at a given distance, at a certain rpm
It all depends on state and local laws.
