Cat Back Exhaust - Stock or Custom?

[CreepingNet]

93 Explorer Sport, 5-Speed, 2wd, 303k mi

It's coming time for smog check and my tailpipe rusted off the original muffler again. So now I'm looking into replacing everything from the cats on back. Definatley time, the heat sheild on top of the muffler came loose and rattles.

Currently I've been looking into replacing the intermediate pipe, muffler, and tailpipe. The big question for me though is go with an OEM style stock replacement, or go with a high flow unit like some of the Walker FX units. I know custom can lower backpressure and might give some performance and gas mileage gains, but then I'm still getting 20mpg on the avg so how much would it really improve.

Also trying to decide on whether I want to give the truck more growl or go back to the stealth quiet sound it has with the tailpipe and stock muffler as I like both.

Any real gains or plusses to either. I read somewhere on the forum that lower back pressure means more high RPM power, but I tend to sip gas at higher gears and lower RPM and quite like how she handles currently, don't want to trade one for the other.

 

[Rick]

I had a bigger seat of the pants improvement going to a high flow cat than I did adding a cat back system. I did the cat back first and didn't notice much if anything.

However if I added a high flow cat first, and had left the stock after cat exhaust, it may not have produced the results that it did.