To start I had always been leaning towards APR or AWE just based off their popularity and sound quality as heard on various YouTube clips.  Then I decided not to leave the used market untapped.  After talking to my brother-in-law I realized that alot of the money that went into a popular $1K exhaust system for my car was due to stuff like extensive polishing, smoothing out of welds and research that can only go so far and produce only but so much.  In the end let's face it, it's a car and will be driven on the road and the exhaust will get dirty unless it's your showcar - of course is far from a showcar.  Really, it's my daily driver currently putting about 50/day on it, albeit 95% highway.

So where does this land me.  I mean I don't think I'm up to going the work of working with an exhaust shop to have a custom one made.  So I turn to my favortie Audi forum audizine.com and start searching through the classifieds.  My first interesting sale was a GHL exhaust coupled with a evolution raceworks downpipe.  Now this is a very good exhaust especially after reading about the GHL exhausts on vwvortex forum.  The company mainly dealt with Porsche and then added VW and now Audi to their exhaust line-up.  Another bonus was the design which would play well with my driveway being very, very steep.  This was because there was a muffler at the midpipe/Y section but the end was just resonators instead of thick mufflers (which may or may not scrap on my driveway).  But they guy was asking like $800 shipped and that was just more than I was willing to pay for a used exhaust.  I mean really the thing looked like copper and he didn't even take the time to polish it up which proabably would have pushed me to buy it.  Oh well!

Patience is a virtue as they say and I waited a little longer only to come across a guy selling a custom full catback exhaust for $500 shipped.  Now this was sounding good and discovered only because the guy decided to repost.  Is was actually a little larger than most and used Vibrant mufflers and resonators.  Designed much like the AWE/Thermal exhaust with the resonators at the Y and mufflers at the end with, get this, 4" tips!  Boy was this sounding good!  I then found the previous post which contained what the new one didn't, a picture of the exhaust on the car.  He had a '02 B6 A4 1.8TQ Avant and luckly for me was the same chassis as my '05, so I bought it.

A few weeks later, the guy was selling his house, it finally arrived via FedEx.  I of course worked from home that day to intercept and ensure it didn't sit on my porch.  Oh yeah I had to sign the package too, yeah that's why I worked from home.  At least that's story I gave my boss, but honestly he didn't care either way.  A car enthusiast himself he wanted to hear it after I got it installed.  I stopping by Monroe tomorrow to pick up some gaskets and lowes for some nuts/bolts for the install Saturday morning.  I got the timeslot OK'd by my wife :-).  I need to do some VAG logging tomorrow so I can get a feel for and changes after.  Stay tuned for follow-up post after the install or maybe during.