What's going on, guys and gals?
Travis from americantrucks.com.
And today, we're checking out arguably one of the loudest and one of the most affordable
stainless steel cat-backs that you can currently buy if you own a 2010 to 2014 6.2-liter Raptor,
that's the Roush Single Exhaust System featuring these very cool AmericanTrucks Exclusive Black
Y-Pipe Tips.
These are actually powder coat tips slashed cut and rolled, they look really great, I'll
touch on that in a little bit.
But the big thing that I wanted to get out there guys, if you just listen to those sound
clips, they don't do it justice.
This thing really wakes up the sound of the 6.2-liter motor, makes it sound the way it
should, it's incredibly lopey.
One of the deepest and one of the loudest exhaust systems that I've actually personally
heard and I've done a ton of them.
So it's safe to say if you live in the suburbs and you want to wake yours neighbors in the
morning, this is gonna do it.
I'm gonna go ahead and peg this thing at a very healthy five out of five on the loudness
meter.
There are not many other options that you can buy for the Raptor that are gonna get
any louder than this.
And on the note of buying a system, this is also the most affordable stainless steel option,
like I just said.
There are some other cat-backs that you can buy for the Raptor for a little bit less than
this, those systems are typically gonna be coming from MBRP.
But just so you know, even though the price on those cat-backs is a little bit less than
this option, they're gonna be made out of the aluminized steel and they're not gonna
provide that same kind of volume and tone.
If you do take your Raptor off-road frequently, guys, you drive it the way it was meant to
be, you're probably getting a lot of mud and water and all kinds of debris under there,
aluminized steel is gonna show signs of rust and corrosion a lot quicker than a stainless
steel setup is.
So if you have any concerns about that, this is gonna get you there.
And again, it's the most affordable one, comes in at around the $700 our price point.
Honestly, guys, in general terms that's on the affordable side of things as far as cat-backs
for the Raptor goes.
Now if you were looking at the site, you've probably seen a lot of the other exhausts
on there, they can easily climb over the $1,000 price point, sometimes up to $2,000 and that's
why I'm kind of excited about this system because Roush is kind of one of those premium
makers if you will, they're kind of top tier.
Normally their prices are a lot higher but they manage to keep the cost down by using
factory grade 409-stainless with this setup.
And then again we have these very cool AmericanTrucks exclusive tips on here, these are a black
powder coat finish actually.
They pretty much took the style and the design of the factory Raptor cat-back and they just
kind of improved on it, so these have a similar setup.
So if you don't want to go too crazy on throwing a bunch of tubes under here, you don't want
to modify your truck too much, this is also an excellent choice because it's basically
using the same configuration, so no modification is required, we're keeping all of our factory
hanger locations.
The install is incredibly simple for that reason, also thanks to the Roush's build quality.
So for that reason, I'm gonna give the install a very modest two out of three wrenches on
the old difficulty meter.
It shouldn't take you more than two hours to get this thing bolted on and that's even
if you're doing it in the driveway with basic hand tools.
You might have to make one cut to the provided mid-pipe in the kit but I'm actually gonna
show you a little trick to get that out of the way, again, very easily with some basic
hand tools.
So, again, if you're looking for one of loudest possible exhaust systems for the 6.2 Raptor,
you really want to wake up that motor, make it sound the way it should but you want to
keep kind of that factory style configuration, and more importantly, you want the most affordable
stainless setup then Roush has you covered on all those points, so definitely a best
buy in my opinion.
Check it out a little bit more on the site and if you decide to stick with this option
over any of the other cat-backs, you can actually come back to this video in just a little bit,
I'm gonna show you guys all the tools that you need to dig out of the old tool toolbox
over there then I'm gonna show you how to get this thing bolted on step by step.
All right, guys, before we get started, you'll need a couple tools here: standard drive ratchet
as well a 13-millimeter socket that can be shallow or deep, you'll need a couple deep
sockets as well, including a 15 and an 18-mil.
If you're using power tools, you'll definitely want an impact swivel socket, especially for
the Y-pipe flange.
And lastly, you'll need a 21-millimeter wrench that's in order for us to install our new
exhaust hanger on the leaf pack.
You'll definitely want a breaker bar for the bolt and nut back there as well.
If your muffler is a little bit stuck because of those exhaust hangers being rusty, definitely
recommend a pry bar and maybe a hammer.
To help get those rubber isolators out of there you'll definitely want an exhaust hanger
puller tool, some sort of pry tool with some spray lubricant.
And again, impact gun is gonna make the whole thing go a lot quicker.
And then lastly, but most importantly we might have to make some cuts to the mid-pipe, in
which case, you'll need a measuring tape, a marker, a cutting implement and you definitely
want some eye pro, only got two sets of eyes.
All right, so once you got all your tools out, go ahead and grab that 13-mil socket.
The first thing we need to do is disconnect our factory cat-back from our Y-pipe.
So we have this kind of flange deal up here.
You have two 13-millimeter bolts holding them together, we're just gonna pull both of those
bolts out.
It's also helpful to spray these down with some spray lubricant like some PB B'laster,
might be some rust on here.
Okay, now we're gonna start disconnecting the cat-back from the vehicle.
So it's held in place with a couple of these rubber isolators and these exhaust hangers,
in fact, there should be about three in total.
We're gonna remove the one in front of the muffler and then we're gonna slide the exhaust
out from the other two.
So it's helpful to have something like an exhaust hanger pryer tool like I have here.
Just go ahead and pop it out and make sure it doesn't come down on you as you do so,
and it's helpful to spray that down as well.
Okay, so the last one of the two remaining hangers is located directly above the muffler
right here.
And again, we're gonna really spray these down, that's gonna really facilitate us sliding
the exhaust and out from these rubber isolators because they're actually gonna stay in place
on the frame rails.
All right, and that last rubber isolator/hanger is over here above the double tailpipes next
to the leaf spring back.
Okay, so we got all those rubber isolators sprayed down, now we're gonna try and actually
remove our exhaust system.
Full disclosure, guys, our truck is in great shape, it's healthy, there's really no rust
under here, so it should slide out pretty easily.
That may not be the case with yours especially if you're using a Raptor as it was intended,
chances are there might be a little bit of rust and corrosion on some of those hangers
that's why I recommended really spraying them down and letting them soak.
But you might have to grab yourself a large pry bar or a dead blow mallet to kind of just
tap on the front of the muffler in order to unseat kind of get it to push itself out of
those rubber isolators.
It's also very helpful to have a friend with you when you do this.
And it goes without saying, guys, this exhaust system is heavy, it's a bunch of steel, you
don't want it coming down on your head.
So when you do actually get this thing to finally unseat and drop down little thing
that I like to do is actually let the tailpipe rest on the rear axle and then you just kind
of push it back a little bit, rotate it a little bit in order to get the tailpipes back
over the axle and slide it out from underneath the truck.
Sounds a little bit confusing, it's actually not that bad.
I'll show you how it's done.
All right, so we got our factory exhaust system removed.
Honestly, guys, that was probably the hardest part of getting this giant turd out of there
in one piece if you will.
Now before we actually discard our system, we are gonna have to actually remove our adapter
for our Y-pipe but I'll touch on that in a second.
I wanted to throw these next to each other and give you a nice little comparison between
the two, figure out what's going on here and why the Roush System is one of my favorites
on this motor.
One of the big reasons why is we're deleting that ugly little resonator there on the mid-pipe
that doesn't do any justice for our exhaust volume or tone.
And then obviously, we're getting rid of this massive ass muffler right here, this thing
is baffled and chambered.
Basically, this is designed to kind of kill the sound that the Raptor is putting out and
that 6.2-liter definitely deserves to breathe the loud and proud.
So the Roush muffler, pretty much a straight through design.
You have one primary flow tube going through the middle, has some perforations in it that
allows some of the exhaust gas to kind of expand into the chamber around it, that actually
kind of gives a deeper tone which sounds really nice especially at idle, gives a nice lope
to it but it's very high flow, much less restrictive than our factory exhaust system.
Then working our way up to the business end here we're actually stepping down from two
individual flow tubes down to one flow tube for the tailpipe, slightly larger diameter
than these individual tubes here.
So that's also gonna give you kind of a deeper tone as it exits out of our exhaust tips.
These exhaust tips are really cool, by the way, I really like these.
These are AmericanTrucks exclusive actually like I mentioned earlier, that's actually
a matte black very flat black powder coat finish.
Honestly, one of the nicest powder coat finishes that I've seen in a long time.
And Roush was also nice enough to emboss them with the logo on there as well.
They do look a lot better than our factory tips.
The factory tips are slash cut but they're not rolled, so over time you kind of see we
have some carbon deposits and some buildup on there and those tips can actually kind
of warp over time.
That's not gonna be the case there because those are slash cut as well but they're actually
rolled, that's gonna give it a little bit of rigidity.
Looks a little bit nicer overall.
And overall, the thickness of the tubing on our new Roush system appears to be a little
bit thicker, a little bit more robust than our factory setup.
I did mention it earlier, one of the reasons why this system is surprisingly affordable
is because we're using factory grade 409-stainless.
And there's nothing wrong with that, honestly.
Even if you do take your Raptor off-road, you throw through the muddle, use it as it's
intended the 409 is gonna stand up to rust and corrosion and all that bad stuff just
as well.
Again, this is factory grade 409 here and you can see our system does quite nice even
though we have taken our truck off-road quite a bit.
So nice little comparison there.
One last thing, we're also keeping all of our factory hanger locations, that's really
nice.
We are adding one more hanger there on the end for our split Y-pipe sort of a deal for
our exhaust tips.
So I'll show you how to get that hanger in there later on.
But let's go ahead and let's work our way down here to the flange.
So what you're gonna have to do, you're actually gonna have to cut this flange just in front
of the resonator.
I can't actually show you guys that because we've actually done it before.
Our flange is actually secured using a barrel clamp on here, so we're gonna pull that off
in just a minute.
But go ahead and grab a Sawzall or something and you just want to make a flush cut as close
as you can to the factory resonator.
We're gonna pull this flange off, we're actually gonna use this plan on our new mid-pipe because
the flange that they throw in the kit only works for EcoBoost and 5-liter trucks, doesn't
work for the larger diameter 6.2-liter.
So go ahead and take your time, get this flange off of here and I'm actually gonna show you
guys a little trick for sizing up the mid-pipe so it can actually cut this thing right now
with both of the systems off the truck that way we're not getting all kind of crazy trying
to throw pieces up there and mock it up, it's a little bit easier.
So I'll meet you guys in just a second.
All right, so once you got that flange removed from the factory setup, go ahead and remove
this one and slide the factory one into your new mid-pipe.
Okay, so we got our factory flange onto our mid-pipe.
Now before I remove that flange, what I actually did was I measured from the inner edge of
the flange all the way up to the tip of the first hanger on our factory cat-back.
That's gonna give us the distance that we need to cut our mid-pipe for in order to get
the correct length on our exhaust sytem.
Now currently with our flange on there on our mid-pipe measuring to our new hanger,
we're coming in at around 57 inches.
So again, we want to go from 57 inches down to 29 inches.
Obviously, your measurement might just be a little bit different because obviously you
had to cut this thing by hand but whatever your measurement comes out to, you want to
measure from the inside lip of the flange here to the tip of that first hanger on your
new muffler, whatever the difference is that's what we're gonna cut.
So again, we got to get this down to 29 inches, let's go ahead and bring this over to our
chop saw, make a quick cut then we can throw this thing on.
Okay, so we went ahead, we made the cut to our mid-pipe, we cleaned up the end there.
Now as you can see, I actually have the new muffler and our factory muffler with both
of our hangers lined up perfectly here.
You can see now we have the correct length here including our flange, so we're all set
there.
So go ahead and grab a 3-inch clamp, throw it on the mid-pipe to connect the flange.
We're also gonna be reusing our factory bolts in order to connect it to our Y-pipe, so go
ahead and meet me under the truck and let's get this thing in place.
Okay, so we're just gonna throw this guy backup onto our factory Y-pipe here.
I'm not gonna be driving these bolts home all the way because we do want to have a little
bit of play in this mid-pipe that way we can make sure we have a little bit of leverage
in order to get the muffler as well as all our flow tubes in place.
Because we do have to kind of bend and twist and pull on some things if you will, we also
have to deal with all those factory rubber isolators.
So again, you just want to have this thing kind of playing around a little bit, just
get it tight enough that it's not gonna completely fall out of here.
If you want to, you can save a little bit of time just zip it home just a little bit
with that 13-mil socket.
Once you get this thing pretty much seated, if you want to, you can actually tighten this
band clamp down all the way, you'll need a 15-mil socket for him.
Okay, our mid-pipe is now secure just enough, so we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna slide
our muffler in place.
Obviously, want to make sure the hanger gets into the rubber isolator to kind of help support
it.
And you also want to make sure you have a band clamp on the muffler but we're not gonna
tighten him down just yet because again, we want to have some rotational play in the muffler
as well.
Okay, now that our muffler is being supported by a pole jack, obviously, you could have
a friend help you out with this but it's gonna make it a lot easier to line up the muffler.
Now we're gonna throw our tailpipe in place and you want to line up both of those hangers
with the remaining two rubber isolators and kind of slide them in while you get the muffler
and the tailpipe to slip together here.
Kind of give it a little bit of a wiggle back and forth in order to get them seated completely.
And you obviously want to make sure you have a 3-inch band clamp on the end of the muffler
in order to secure the tailpipe.
But again, we're just gonna leave everything loose for now.
All right, now that our tailpipe assembly is in place, we're gonna install the new hanger
provided in the kit, this is actually gonna go on the portion that holds the exhaust tips.
And he actually used sandwiches in between this bolt for our leaf spring pack here on
this bracket.
Now if your truck is in the air and the suspension's offload then you're good to go here, if not
you want to raise the truck up on the frame rails so you don't have any load on your suspension.
Once you've done that, you can loosen this bolt.
Guys, it's very important you don't remove this bolt completely, you don't even want
to take the nut off the other side, you just need to open it up enough to get that hanger
in there.
So go ahead and grab a 21-millimeter socket for the nut and go ahead and grab an 18-mil
socket for the bolt side and grab a big old breaker bar, just start loosening him up.
Once you get him to loose enough you can switch over to a standard hand ratchet.
Now as you loosen this bolt up, you might notice that your leaf pack might move a little
bit, that's understandable, that's normal.
But once we get this bracket in place, we're only gonna be tightening this up but just
enough to keep it from going anywhere.
We don't want to tighten this down completely with our suspension offload because that could
end up tearing one of the bushings inside of this leaf pack here.
So we're just gonna snug it up enough to keep this in place.
And you can see this as a little bit of a pain here if you don't have a buddy to help
you.
Okay, now we can throw on this little Y-pipe here for our exhaust tips.
Go ahead and spray down this isolator, get the hanger in there all the way.
You might have to put a little bit of pressure on the tailpipe in order to get these seated,
it's a little stiff here.
But once you got them seated, we all set.
Now we can grab our tips and again make sure you got a clamp on here as well.
Okay, Y-pipe is in place, we are happy with all our tubes and how everything's sitting
now we can throw our tips on and we're gonna be using the remaining clamps in the kit in
order to get these guys in place, they're a little bit smaller than the rest so it should
be pretty easy to tell which ones are which.
Want the Roush logo facing up on both of them and just kind of rotate them until you're
happy with the way they're sitting, then we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna tighten these
down and you'll need a 15-mil socket for both of these.
Okay, we're happy with where our exhaust tips are sitting, all of our pipes are lined up,
do yourself a favor, double check that all your clearances are good, you don't want any
of your tubes kind of rattling around on anything.
Once you've double checked that you're happy with where everything's sitting, we can tighten
down all of our remaining clamps.
Again, 15-mil socket for all the clamps in the kit then we'll work our way up to the
front of the Y-pipe and tighten down that flange with our 13-mil socket.
That should wrap up everything for us today.
And when you go to tighten down these bolts on the flange, you want to kind of alternate
side to side that way it's not kinked to one side.
All right, so once you got the tips in place, you got all those clamps bolted down, do yourself
a favor, double check everything one more time then you can finally put the key in the
ignition, turn it over and enjoy that new lopey idle.
That'll wrap up my review and install of the Roush Single Exhaust System featuring the
AmericanTrucks Exclusive Black Y-Pipe Tips, fitting your 2010 to 2014 to 6.2-Liter Powered
Raptor F-150.
Be sure to check it out more on the site.
And for all things F-150, keep it right here at americantrucks.com.