Hi CanadianKnight ,
Since you asked, I'll give you an honest assessment. I bought my SE in May of 2010 and put 10k miles on it with the stock single exhaust. I drive 150 miles a day for a commute. As I've said, 99% of that is highway miles (1 toll booth stop each way and sometimes heavy traffic). My speed averages between 70 and 80 miles per hour. It's a mix of gentle hills and long flat stretches. At my average speeds, the tach needle sits between 2100 to 2400 RPM's. I had the SRT six-speed exhaust installed last September. It's the type with two separate canister type mufflers flowing into dual suitcase style resonators. As you are aware, the SRT exhaust has the largest diameter pipes available from the factory. That's 2.75" at it's widest point. I had them welded in. I got the SRT exhaust at a giveaway price and installation was no challenge for the muffler shop guys. Simply put, it's cheap duals for the SE.
After the SRT duals install, the driving character of the car changed. The duals sounded much better than the stock single pipe. Above 1900 rpm's, the car would take off! The tach needle swung up to red line so fast, I had to consciously keep glancing at it to make sure I wouldn't over rev the engine when I stepped on it. I could hear the engine better as well. Stock pipes produced very little drone, just a nice rumble. So, these pipes seemed to be perfect for my car.
However, I also noticed that at speeds BELOW 1900 rpm, the car would lose forward momentum when going up a grade. I had to consciously push in on the pedal to keep steady rpms. The car would get louder to let me know something was happening, but, the rpm's would stay the same. Only if I forced a downshift to get ABOVE 1900 rpms would anything actually happen as far as forward motion. At a steady 55 miles per hour, this becomes somewhat of a pain. The car is geared so high (numerically low), that when left in full automatic, the transmission tries to keep the rpms down to about 1500. As a consequence, in small increments, you're on the gas, off the gas, on the gas, off the gas and so on trying to maintain that speed. It pretty much forces me to drive faster than 55. Obviously, this is caused by the slight loss of torque below the magic 1900 rpm figure. Like Sammy Haggar used to say "I can't drive 55!". My solution was to simply put the car in Autostick mode and drive the snot out of it! I don't do much city driving so this works for me. My recommendation. If you do much urban driving with hills, go for the smaller RT exhaust and pass on the SRT. Frankly, now with 34,000 miles on the clock, I'm STILL happy with mine.
Greg
