Originally Posted By: Nick R
Our Equinox has #4. Single pipe to back, muffler, and two outputs.
The only real downside with the setup is that the 3.0L Doesn't really move enough hot air to warm it up. In cold weather, even after long highway trips, at idle and slow speeds still condenses out the exhaust. It looks good, but isn't functional. Personally on a car like my focus, I like the plain single exhaust.
Now, I recall seeing somewhere a whle back that if you have a V8, you don't want true dual exhaust. A single exhaust will provide better performance, because V8 engines exhaust are in pulses, and a single exhaust helps keep the flow and backpressure up. Or something like that.
Also no exhaust at all, no cats or mufflers, seems to give problems with hard starting in cold weather due to lack of backpressure. A lot of engines perform better with some backpressure. versus no backpressure. Similar to how a lot of 2 stroke engines won't even operate without a resonator to provide backpressure.
Even a SINGLE exhausts in pulses. GM for years has had a corporate policy of one cat per car. Beware of serpent car salesmen who will tell you that one pipe is better than two. One of the main problems, outside of not cheaping out on converters, of a dual system is noise, crossover pipes reduct the rap and are required to meet noise standards. Cheaper to use one pipe and a phony "Y" in the back. If ya gonna use a mingy "Y", at least paint the pipes black so those of us behind you can't see the silly "dual" pipes.