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M2 Technical Topics > S55 Engine / Drivetrain / Exhaust / Bolt-ons / Tuning > Active Autowerke EL Mid Pipe Issues (M2C)

View Poll Results: What is your exhaust setup & are you experiencing the raspy "tin can" noise issue?
EL mid pipe (non-res) / stock axleback / no issue 3 5.88%
EL mid pipe (non-res) / stock axleback / yes, my car has the same issue! 16 31.37%
EL mid pipe (res) / stock axleback / no issue 5 9.80%
EL mid pipe (res) / stock axleback / yes, my car has the same issue! 3 5.88%
EL mid pipe (non-res) / aftermarket axleback / no issue 6 11.76%
EL mid pipe (non-res) / aftermarket axleback / yes, my car has the same issue! 7 13.73%
EL mid pipe (res) / aftermarket axleback / no issue 4 7.84%
EL mid pipe (res) / aftermarket axleback / yes, my car has the same issue! 7 13.73%
Voters: 51. You may not vote on this poll

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      06-30-2021, 09:27 AM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ESB View Post
@No_curebimmer so when it's warm you get this close to 100% on every rev past 2k?

After all this discussion started happening I guess I've noticed very occasional tin-can noise when warm and revving past 2k. But it's not close to 100%.

Overall I stand by my original judgment of "I love and recommend this midpipe" even after now being more acutely aware of some issues. But it does indeed sound like you have worse issues than me….sorry to hear that :/

Good luck
Double and triple check the install.. on the first drive after my single channel install, I noticed an odd noise at about 2400rpm.. only there, not lower, not higher.

I checked and checked, and what I found was one of the bolt heads for the heat shielding just about the midpipe had clearance sitting still, but I was willing to bet was getting hit at a very certain rpm and therefore vibration.

So, I pulled the nut off, cut about 1/4th of an inch off the bolt leaving just enough for the nut to go back on.

BAM.. problem solved.

Clearances can be VERY VERY VERY tight, between the bracing plate, heat shielding and the rest, so triple check install first.
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      06-30-2021, 10:39 AM   #24
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicname View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Supadice View Post
I appreciate you guys going through all this hopefully it will be resolved soon. I know bigger resonators are coming with new batches they are double the size of the old says AA
Does this mean it'll be more quiet? That was not what I was looking for when I went with the resonated version.
Traditionally that's not how resonators work. More a question for AA. But to my understanding resonators are designed to remove unwanted resonance shitty sounds
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      06-30-2021, 10:41 AM   #25
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Wow, I was just about to make a thread on this topic. I have the EL with no resonator, stock down pipes, stock M2C exhaust and the first few minutes are so embarrassing to drive my car. So much so in fact, that it's been sitting in my garage and I've been driving my other fun car around while I come to terms with this. I have been seriously considering swapping my single midpipe back on the car just because it never made such an awful sound.
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      06-30-2021, 10:45 AM   #26
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OK I guess I have to comment. I have had my AA EL sitting in the garage waiting for install for 2 weeks. I also wanted to keep the stock exhaust and down pipes. With all this new news I may just sell it and keep everything stock. Well exhaust wise that is.
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      06-30-2021, 11:25 AM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by epic View Post
Wow, I was just about to make a thread on this topic. I have the EL with no resonator, stock down pipes, stock M2C exhaust and the first few minutes are so embarrassing to drive my car. So much so in fact, that it's been sitting in my garage and I've been driving my other fun car around while I come to terms with this. I have been seriously considering swapping my single midpipe back on the car just because it never made such an awful sound.
Aside from the cold starts, do you prefer the tone of the EL? Is the single much louder?
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      06-30-2021, 11:29 AM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicname View Post
Aside from the cold starts, do you prefer the tone of the EL? Is the single much louder?
I do prefer the tone over single midpipe but I do think the single midpipe was a bit louder. The exhaust sounds much cleaner when being wound up. I am going to list my single midpipe soon if this tin-can issue is easily fixable.

Also wanted to add that I do not see any melting on my diffuser - but I do have the M Performance carbon diffuser installed:
View post on imgur.com
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      06-30-2021, 07:18 PM   #29
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Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.

If you are having drone/rasp outside of these conditions 1- make sure you have the new resonators 2- double check the install
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      06-30-2021, 08:10 PM   #30
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.

If you are having drone/rasp outside of these conditions 1- make sure you have the new resonators 2- double check the install
Closing in on my 3 week mark with this setup and I would say this has been exactly my experience so far. I leave my house at around 4am in the morning and stay in efficient mode until I leave my development and have heard no strange noises in this mode. However, if in sport mode those first few mins will produce rasp/tin noise and it will be loud. Once I'm out of the development it's sport+ and it sounds good. Overall I'm still very happy with the setup and would do it again no questions. A little sad about my diffuser but someone also commented on one of the M2 FB pages and noted they had this happen with the stock exhaust. Just think the muffler is getting hotter with less restriction and also the different types of piping etc as someone else mentioned. Plus the stock diffuser is already so close to the muffler, I would say less than an inch clearance. I guess it'll give me a reason to get a carbon diffuser in the near future.
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      06-30-2021, 08:29 PM   #31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.

If you are having drone/rasp outside of these conditions 1- make sure you have the new resonators 2- double check the install
So this tinny noise will always be present when driving at 2k RPM? Essentially town/street driving will always produce this sound even after warmed up and with the new resonators?
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      06-30-2021, 09:14 PM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicname View Post
So this tinny noise will always be present when driving at 2k RPM? Essentially town/street driving will always produce this sound even after warmed up and with the new resonators?
Unfortunately that seems to be the case :/ as a daily driver I’m wishing now I would have went for the single midpipe + Remus sport. The cold start would be perfect. So now I’ll have to always start it in efficient, wait till it warms up, and then put it in sport snd keep it above 2k rpm? This is not ideal really.
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      07-01-2021, 12:43 AM   #33
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.

If you are having drone/rasp outside of these conditions 1- make sure you have the new resonators 2- double check the install
Mike - I appreciate you taking the initiative to get further information directly from AA but this "recommendation" they've provided is completely unacceptable and I would imagine others who've also purchased the EL mid pipe already for their M2C/CS probably feel similar.

How can AA in good conscience sell a product that they know has a huge flaw like this and not inform potential buyers beforehand? If they somehow knew of this issue during development and went forward producing it anyway than that's a pretty shady move in my eyes so I'm really hoping that's not the whole story here and there's more to be told.

ONLYACTIVE care to comment further on Mike's statement as I'm sure all of us have many questions to be asked. I guess the most obvious questions I have are why is this not a problem on the F80/82 platform? What is different about the F87 platform specifically that causes this annoying raspy "tin can" sounding noise? Lastly, why can't this issue be resolved somehow?

Last edited by StephGOD; 07-01-2021 at 12:52 AM..
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      07-01-2021, 05:47 AM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.

If you are having drone/rasp outside of these conditions 1- make sure you have the new resonators 2- double check the install

How would I be able to get the new resonators? I reached out to Active on Instagram and no response.
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      07-01-2021, 07:33 AM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.
I know you are the messenger so this isn't directed at you, but... ARE YOU F'ING KIDDING ME? What kind of recommendation is that? I NEVER drive in efficient, and I'm sure most people who order midpipes and exhausts don't either. And... that recommendation doesn't address the lovely cold start.

AA needs to make this right... this is BS.


Last edited by Wah; 07-01-2021 at 07:39 AM..
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      07-01-2021, 08:34 AM   #36
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I want to hear AA's response because all the other videos beforehand never showed this issue. But if it really is true, I'll be changing to single midpipe for now.
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      07-01-2021, 09:38 AM   #37
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This mess is really disappointing. I was looking forward to upgrading the exhaust and this product promised so much. While I don't agree with the response, I'm not surprised either. Hopefully a revised version can be worked out that addresses the underlying technical cause.
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      07-01-2021, 10:20 AM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by maxcbrdriver View Post
This mess is really disappointing. I was looking forward to upgrading the exhaust and this product promised so much. While I don't agree with the response, I'm not surprised either. Hopefully a revised version can be worked out that addresses the underlying technical cause.
same here, this was something I was going to add to the stock exhaust for that extra something something but until they got this figured out not going to be doing it. I don't even mind the way the car sounds stock tbh but definitely don't want my car to sound like a clown trumpet when it starts
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      07-01-2021, 10:28 AM   #39
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Like I said above I am glad I did not install it yet as now I would be dealing with this issue and a cut stock exhaust. I will wait a little longer for maybe a better response from AA but if there is none I think we will see a lot of these in the sale section. Including mine.
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      07-01-2021, 10:48 AM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Hi,
Per Active Autowerke, the drone/rasp issue is only present on sport mode when driving at 2K and/or cold start.

It is recommended to drive the car in efficient mode and use Sport mode only when you are at a higher RPM than 2K.
In other words, efficient mode during daily driving and sport mode during pulls or when manually shifting with RPM over 2K.

If you are having drone/rasp outside of these conditions 1- make sure you have the new resonators 2- double check the install
Sorry Mike, I appreciate you reaching out to them, but I agree that this isn't an acceptable solution. Cold starts are bad in Efficient/Sport/MDM, I've been turning the car on (manual) without using the clutch, pre-selecting the different modes before starting the engine, and they're all affected.

This is impacting the people without resonators, because most of us were told that as long as you have a stock downpipe, that non-res was the way to go.

Yesterday, I drove 35 minutes, had the car in Sport mode the entire time, and actually heard the tinny sound around 2k when I was a few minutes from my house on some back roads......so the car was well warm (it was 97 degrees yesterday).

Here is my main issue with this whole thing. I never heard any negative complaints about the EL, and none of this came up prior to placing an order a couple months ago, which is how long it took to receive the order. We all know the M2C sounds like a weed eater stock (to most people's ears), so we're all out looking for an acceptable solution.

With the AA EL, when it isn't doing the tinny sound, to my ears, it's exactly what I was looking for....easily a 9/10 IMO. But, when the tinny sound comes on, in a parking lot, in my neighborhood, driving slow around town, it's so embarrassing I want to cringe or dive in a hole, it's a 1/10. The end result, to me personally, is that I would rather have my old stock system.

So if this can be fixed, with the existing installs, I think that's what a lot of us are looking for. Realistic solutions. Not, "push Sport once the car is over 2,000rpm and then push Efficient when you slow down to enter a corner...".
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      07-01-2021, 10:54 AM   #41
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Since I somehow became the messenger in this, I would like to hear customer feedback on this.

Is what Active said accurate? meaning you only hear the rattle on cold start or sport mode at 2K
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      07-01-2021, 11:15 AM   #42
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This is a mess
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      07-01-2021, 11:24 AM   #43
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com View Post
Since I somehow became the messenger in this, I would like to hear customer feedback on this.

Is what Active said accurate? meaning you only hear the rattle on cold start or sport mode at 2K
Mine was only cold start. Sounded great after a couple minutes but cold start had this loud annoying vibrating sound. Couldn't drive out of my garage in the morning without cringing.
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      07-01-2021, 11:58 AM   #44
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I will also mention that this sound never shows up at the shop because unless the car has been sitting for hours, even slightly warm, it sounds fine.

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