2014-2021 5.7L Tundra Borla Touring Dual Exhaust System with Black Chrome Tips Review & Sound Clip
Jake: Jake here for ExtremeTerrain, and today I'm taking a look at the Borla Touring Dual Rear Exit Exhaust with Black Chrome Tips, fitting 2014 to 2021 5.7-liter Tundras. If you're looking to give your Tundra a bit more personality without going way over the top, then this might just be the answer for you. Borla's Touring Catback brings with it a pleasant tone coupled with just a bit more noise and performance without going too far up the loudness meter. It is a high quality setup that's going to give you a slightly deeper tone off idle, a bit more volume and an aggressive note up top, but it doesn't go too far on outright volume. For that reason, this is going to get a two out of five on our loudness meter. Now, folks around you are going to know that something is different about your truck but you're not going to be getting letters from the neighbors over noise violations.
And since this is the touring profile and that lower volume, this is going to be a perfect setup for a daily driven truck. Even the 5.7-liter Tundras are pretty quiet right out of the gate. You don't get a whole lot of exhaust noise. It's mostly that engine and fan noise. So the stock setup definitely leaves room for improvement. Borla's Touring Profile is the quietest of their offerings, but it's still a noticeable change versus your stock setup.
While this isn't going to turn your truck into an absolute screaming banshee, it is going to amplify that V8 rumble and it's not going to blow out your eardrums. So if you're looking for outright raucous sound and volume, this is not your system. But as you heard in the clips at the beginning of the video, this does give your truck some additional volume and a deep smooth tone that's more akin to a muscle car.
It's much more befitting a pickup with a big V8 under the hood. Now, Borla takes great care to make their exhausts in such a way that there is absolutely no drone. They use something they call polyphonic harmonizing technology. It sounds like some kind of made up buzzword, but that's exactly the point. There's no buzz out of this at all.
So this is essentially the same type of science that goes into tuning pipe organs. They use different lengths of pipe to control different frequencies, and that eliminates obtrusive or dissonant sounds. So in this system, all of that is contained inside of the muffler. Now, since this is a dual inlet and dual outlet, there's actually also an H pipe that's integrated inside of this muffler, too. And you get a lot of baffling.
So all that means you're not going to get that annoying droning noise when you're cruising along like you might with a less expensive or a less well-made system. Borla claims with their exhaust that there is zero drone at any speed, at any RPM and in any gear. And that's about as true as it gets. And that, to me, is the most important part. You get that really nice, pleasing exhaust note without the drone.
And if you've ever experienced a really drony exhaust in the past, you know that it doesn't take long for them to grate on your nerves. Might sound awesome on the outside, but if you can go out of your way to avoid that drone, I'm sure most of us would do that. So, again, you're going to get that great sound, no drone, and it's going to make it an ideal setup for a daily driven truck, or one that sees a lot of road trips. Or if you're even hauling or towing a lot where, your engine is constantly shifting and under stress, it's going to keep a good job of keeping things under wrap while you're cruising along, but it's going to let it sing when you really romp on it.
This is, of course, a full catback system. So this is also going to replace your factory muffler and resonator with this big muffler unit right here. And Borla also claims that this setup weighs less than your factory exhaust, too. So despite being a dual exhaust and having a lot of piping here, this is going to be a little bit of weight savings for you, too.
Now, capping everything off here are the dual black chrome tips that you see down in the front of the table here, and they bring a really slick kind of stealthy look to the rear end of your truck. It's a nice change versus the stock single side exit, and makes the truck look just that more aggressive overall without going over the top. And since you are adding a bit of piping for the driver side exit, you might be concerned about clearance around the frame and spare tire. But don't worry, these sections are designed to fit perfectly over everything. It's going to have plenty of clearance, so you don't have to do anything aside from bolting up the provided hangers for that side.
Plus, these just look cool. Now, chrome is not everybody's speed, but black chrome, I think, is going to look good on any truck no matter what color or setup you've got going on. Now, these are rolled slash cut four-inch tips, and they've got the Borla logo debossed on the end here, too. These are made from T304 stainless, too, and they're finished with that really nice kind of shiny black coating. So not only do they look great, they're also going to stand the test of time, too. As far as construction goes, this is a really high-quality system, and you can tell the moment you take it out of the box.
Borla makes all of their exhausts out of T304 stainless steel, so this is no exception. That means you're going to get the best corrosion and rust resistance you possibly can with an exhaust. As you can see, it's just really nice-looking.
It's almost a shame that you're not going to be able to see it once it's on the truck. The piping here is all two and a quarter-inch mandrel-bent tubing all the way back, and then you finish it off with those big four-inch chrome tips. So all the exhaust gases are going to flow nice and smoothly through.
Again, this is a dual inlet, dual outlet muffler as well, so it's going to allow your engine to breathe a bit better than the stock system since there is no Y-pipe here. Pricing is going to come in at about $1,700 and that does put this towards the top end of the category when it comes to exhaust systems for this gen of Tundra. Now you can go a less expensive route, of course, but you're likely going to end up sacrificing on material and sound quality.
You might run into issues with drone as well. In my humble opinion, at least, while yes, this is spendy, it's expensive, it's worth putting the funds toward a quality system if you spend a lot of time in the driver's seat. Now, I run a similar Borla system on my own truck, and having had other exhausts on previous vehicles, some of which have been very droney, I can say that I'm really, really happy with the Borla, and I think you will be too, if you can find a way to fit it into the budget. Installation is going to come in at a two out of three on our difficulty meter, and you should expect this to take you about two hours to complete. This is a bolt-on system, doesn't require you to do any modification to your truck, and you get all the necessary hardware and clamps included in the box. You also get those two additional hangers with the new isolators and even the bolts that are required to get these bolted up to the truck that we were talking about earlier.
So again, these just bolt in, you don't have to modify anything, so it makes it really, really easy, and otherwise it's going to utilize all your factory exhaust hangers. So it's a pretty straightforward installation you can definitely handle at home. Just know if you haven't done an exhaust before, they get a little finicky because there's multiple pieces, but if you've got an extra set of hands and a jack stand, you should have no problem with it.
And with that, let's throw it over to the install bay, and we'll show you exactly how to get this one done. Male 1: For this install you will need an impact, 14-millimeter swivel socket, 15-millimeter socket, in our case a 17-millimeter swivel socket, 19-millimeter socket, swivel adapter, 3⁄8 to half-inch adapter if necessary, 15-millimeter wrench for us, exhaust hanger pliers, and not pictured here would be a pole jack or jack stands. What's up, guys? Today we're going to be installing a new exhaust on our Tundra, but before we get started we're going to send you to watch a short video on how to uninstall your factory setup, and we'll see you when you get back. Male 2: All right. So before we can get started installing our new exhaust, we're gonna go ahead and get our factory one off.
We're gonna show you how to do that while keeping our factory pipe intact. Obviously, if you plan on never reusing your original equipment muffler and exhaust pipe, you can just cut it and make it a lot easier to remove off of your truck, to be quite honest with you. But this is a fleet vehicle, so this installation is not gonna be permanent. So we're gonna show you how to get it all out in one piece. Let's go ahead and get started.
One thing I would recommend doing before you get going here, let your exhaust cool down if you've been driving your truck. And also get in there with some lubricating oil and spray up the little rubber hangers. That'll make popping those metal hangers out of the rubber a lot easier. All right.
Now to get started, like I already said, guys, I'm gonna make sure everything's cooled down. These first two bolts that we're gonna take out are right by a catalytic converter, which gets really hot. And we've been letting our truck sit for like an hour and it's still pretty warm. I also recommend having eyewear and some gloves while you work with your exhaust.
Exhaust pipes tend to have sharp edges to them, not to mention the surfaces being hot as well. So let's go ahead and get these out. Our factory bolts are 14-millimeter. All right, same 14-millimeter socket for these 2 bolts as well.
Now we're going to have a total of four rubber hangers like this guys. And to be quite honest with you, if you're trying to keep your pipe intact like we are, you can do these in any order that you want. We're kind of doing it the way it might be easiest for us to demonstrate for you. So we're at the one that's all the way, obviously, back here by our spare tire. and you might see a little bit of wetness here on the rubber.
I sprayed some penetrating oil on there earlier just to let it sink in. That makes these coming off a lot easier. All right guys, now this is the fourth out of four rubber hangers.
So obviously once we pop this one loose, you gotta make sure your pipe is supported in some kind of way. Male 1: Alrighty, guys, welcome back. Now that we've shown you how to remove your factory setup, we're going to go ahead and begin installing our new system. So to do that, we're going to grab our flange pipes here.
We're going to start with our longer one and we're going to go right into this hanger isolator first. Just pop that right into place, nice and easy. Rotate it up into position.
You may even have to pull it back a little bit. We'll go ahead and reinstall our factory 14-millimeter bolt. Start with our bottom one here. We're just going to loosely install this for now just to hold it in place to allow for any adjustments we need to make while we're installing the rest of our system.
Then for our top bolt in particular, we have had to modify ours due to thread issues on our nut. So we're going to use our 17-millimeter bolt and 15-millimeter nut on the backside. But again, your factory one should be a 14-millimeter. Get ours into place. And just loose for now so we can do what we need to do as we go along.
Next, we'll go ahead and install our shorter passenger side one here. Again, we're going to go through our hanger isolator. Push that right through. This is where it pays to lubricate your isolators. Always helps. Then again we'll reuse our factory 14-millimeter hardware, and leave it loose for now as well, then we can move on to our muffler section.
So we're going to get ready to install our muffler section and before we do that we're going to grab two of our two and a half inch clamps, slide them over our mid pipes here. Just so they're already in place, you don't forget about them. And then we can go ahead on with our muffler. Now we can go ahead and get our muffler/over axle section into place. You notice we've got our pole jack on here.
This is a rather large muffler. If you don't have one of these, an extra set of hands would be very useful. Go ahead and get this lined up with our mid pipes. And this is why you want everything loose. So we can go ahead and slip these on. Maybe need to adjust our height here a little bit.
You notice we have our first one in. Always pays to get one in at a time. And once you have both of your mid pipes into your muffler assembly, go ahead and seat those in a position. For this you just gotta work it into it.
And once we have that seated, we can come back to this hanger isolator here. It's gonna be a little bit tough. Just gonna work it into position there. Go ahead and seat that hanger into your isolator. So now that we have our muffler and over axle section on, it's time to add our hanger since this is going to be a rear dual exit exhaust as opposed to the single side exit that is the factory system. So what we're going to do is come up here to the outside of our frame rail directly behind our sway bar end link.
Go ahead and remove this bolt. And to do that we're going to use our 19-millimeter socket on our impact, and pop that off. Then we're going to grab our new hanger as well as our provided 22-millimeter bolt and flat washer.
Go ahead and set this in with your hanger rods pointing towards the rear of the vehicle. Go ahead and get that started. We'll go ahead and use our 22-mil socket on our impact to tighten this down. And then you can go ahead and do the same thing on the other side.
It is the same exact bolt in the same location. Next, we can go ahead and begin installing our rear exit hangers here. As our factory is a single side exit, we're going to need to add two hangers in for our rear exit. So, we'll go ahead and remove these two bolts at the end of our frame rail here using our 19-millimeter socket on our impact.
So now that we have our bolts removed, we can go ahead and get our hanger into place. But before we do that, we're going to go ahead and install our isolator, as it is a pretty tight fit. Go ahead and get that worked on.
Get our hanger in place. Now we'll reuse our two factory bolts. You want your hanger rods to be facing towards the front of the vehicle on this part.
Get those on, and we'll tighten them back down again with our 19-millimeter socket, and swivel adapter on our impact. Once you have this completed on this side, you can go ahead and repeat the same process on the other side. So now we can go ahead and install our passenger side tip and outlet pipe. So we've got our clamp slipped over our pipe here. We're gonna go ahead and get this in line.
Get it into our isolator first. Pretty easy to work with there. Push this all the way through. That'll give us enough room to get it over into our slip joint.
Once we have that in, go ahead and work that into place. Make sure that sits fully. [inaudible] up to our joint. Again, we're going to leave that loose for now.
Next, we can go ahead and install our crossover pipe. So again, we'll slide our clamp over our slip joint here. Get that lined up with our over axle tube. And we'll sit this fully into place. Then we can install our next outlet. So now we can go ahead and get our driver side tip and outlet installed.
Again, we have our clamp here. Slide that into the position. And kind of the same deal here, we're gonna go ahead and get it into the isolator first.
Slide it all the way through. We'll come to our slip joint here. We'll get that lined up. We can work this back so that our tip fully sits into our crossover pipe. Then we can begin tightening everything down.
Now we're moving along as we've got everything tightened down up to our tip and crossover pipe section. You want to make sure your tips are where you want them. We'll start with our passenger side here.
So now we can go ahead and tighten this clamp down using our 15-millimeter socket on our impact. You want to make sure your clamp goes basically to the end of your slip joint. That's nice and secure. We made sure our tip is still good on the other side, so we'll go ahead and tighten down our crossover pipe clamp as well. And lastly, we'll tighten down our driver side outlet and tip clamp here. Alrighty, guys, that about wraps up our review and install of our Borla Touring Dual Exhaust System with Black Chrome Tips and Rear Exit for your '14 to '21 5.7-liter Tundra.
Thank you for watching. And as always, for everything Tundra, keep it right here at extremeterrain.com.
2023-10-01 21:53
