Our exhausts have earned praise from owners and the press alike, due
to their unique "Jekyll and Hyde" personality. We spend considerable
time and effort during development to achieve remarkable civility when
idling and crusing at part throttle, while also producing a war-cry wail
when full throttle is applied. Sophisticated, refined, and powerful,
all at once.
GTI owners also see our R32 Style exhaust system.
We spent considerable time examining how to maximize the performance
and options of this exhaust system. The factory exhaust consists of a
long downpipe with two catalytic converters, and two rather large
mufflers in the section after the cats.
Thorough long term street testing has confirmed that our high flow
downpipe, whether equipped with with the 400 cell ceramic catalytic
converter (for FSI) or the 200 cell metal catalytic converter (for both
FSI and TSI), will not set a Check Engine light or any fault codes in
the ECU. For FSI customers looking for ultimate power, our HJS German
made metal catalytic converter will provide an additional 9hp over our ceramic converter option.
Here are some features of our system. Each feature was chosen for
performance and longevity reasons, and when making your exhaust
decisions you should settle for nothing less:
- Fully mandrel bent tubing
- Thick .065" wall T304 stainless steel tubing
- Fully lined stainless steel flex joint in downpipe
- Stainless steel internal muffler and resonator construction
- Stainless steel MIG and TIG welds
- Stainless steel T-bolt clamps
- Double walled exhaust tips to reduce heat discoloration
- Included OEM turbo to downpipe gasket
- In house dyno developed
The downpipe features an integrated resonator to keep the exhaust
sound volume civilized even with the elimination of the very restrictive
factory converters. Our downpipe is the first performance downpipe to
be released that will not trigger a Check Engine Light on TSI 2.0T cars,
even on factory software.
The catback system is topped off with our signature 3.15" beveled
exhaust tips. The tips sport stamped AWE Tuning logos and are double
walled to ensure a mirror polish even under hard usage. The system has
multiple slip joints with high quality stainless band clamps, to allow
optimal adjustment.
Our catback systems will mate up to the stock downpipe, and our
downpipe will mate to our catback or any other catback that is designed
to mate up to the factory downpipe.
Why did we choose 2.5 inch and not 3.0 inch diameter for our MK5 exhaust?
Our first prototypes of this system were indeed 3.0 inch, but we found
that the effort it took to move the large mass of air in the 3.0 inch
system at lower rpms resulted in a loss of torque with very little offsetting gain up top. Take a look at our 3.0 inch prototype dyno sheets here and see why a 3.0 inch system is not appropriate for this car.
Please note, the AWE Tuning Performance Downpipes are for racing use only.