Team Moon Exhaust

Article by  YellowMR2

I loaded the TM exhaust in my Spyder and headed out to Fairfield Muffler and Brake. It’s a locally owned father and son shop that was recommended by Fairfield Toyota. Ken Patrick is the father and the person who did the work on my Spyder.

I didn’t get a picture but a few people were surprised to see my yellow Spyder sitting at the stop light right in front of a beautiful red Plymouth Prowler. I wish my camera had been on the passenger seat instead of the storage compartment behind me.

Ken put the car up on the lift and started looking around the engine compartment. I brought along the instructions but he didn’t need them. He did the following to remove the old exhaust.

• Remove the plastic shield.
• Remove the bolts that connect the catalytic converter to the muffler.
• Remove the bolts that connect the catalytic converter to the exhaust manifold. Even though he had an air wrench, he had a hard time getting two of these nuts off.
• Removed the muffler from the hanger straps. This was by far the hardest part for him. He tried various methods until he remembered he had a tool to do the job. It was designed for fords but popped the brackets right out of the holders.
• He managed to get the exhaust out without removing the sway bar.

With the old exhaust out, you can see just how much room that huge muffler took up. The install was pretty easy. Ken did have to bend the hanger rods a bit to get the muffler to sit properly. They were poking out of the box when it arrived from UPS so this wasn’t surprising. He obviously had to cut the plastic shield. It now looks symmetrical with the two pipes sticking out evenly and the plastic shield besides them. The install cost me $100. I probably could have got a better deal at Midas but I’d rather pay a bit more and know I’m getting someone I can trust.

I did have to go back the next day as the muffler was coming out of the passenger side hanger. A quick bend on the hanger rod and I was back in business.

I think the exhaust looks nice on the back of the car. I’ve got stock tips that need to be shined up. They don’t stick way out nor are the tips too big looking. I can see someone going up just slightly on the tip size. Pmok probably has the perfect tips now that I’ve seen the exhaust on the car from below.

What a beautiful note the car now sings. You can feel it in your seat too. It’s definitely louder but it’s definitely not too loud. I think the main change is the tone of the exhaust. It’s a much deeper and fuller sound. You can hear it and feel it when you accelerate. I really like the sound. If you’ve listened to the video of Badspyder’s exhaust, it’s similar to that but deeper. That video doesn’t capture the true bass sound.

I don’t know how much the performance has increased. It sure seems faster but that could be the fact that I can feel the exhaust in my seat. I did get the car up to 95 MPH and the exhaust doesn’t get louder as the RPMs get higher. Like others have written, I do believe it’s louder at lower RPMs and as the RPMs increase, the sound also increases but at a lower rate.

If anyone has any questions, please address them in the forum and I’ll answer the best I can. I occasionally have trouble operating a can opener so please, no deep technical questions unless you want them answered by someone else.

YellowMR2