Charlie Chan was a comical character and for my money, there's nothing comical about the performance of the Top Speed products. As you will note, I have a few of their products and have found them to be very high quality. My Indy commented favorably on the quality of the exhaust.

I object to the Charlie Chan reference and think that fair minded people would too.
For the record, I'm not a bleeding heart whiner, far from it. Most of my opinions would be well to the right of Mitt Romney.

Okay, back to car stuff.
I've saved my original muffler and one day I'll find a shop to do the "Pedro exhaust mod" on it.

I didn't mean to imply myself that the Top Speed item is cheap, DFW, just explaining what the nickname does to the credibility of the part and the company that makes it. As someone stated, with a name like that, they feel it's not quality, and I'm sure they are feeling that way whether they know about Charlie Chan's foolishness from back in the day or not. I agree that Che's made some good products for our cars, and I can only hope that his company grows, which is why I don't really care for the nickname, as it can turn people away from a decent product and make them assume that it's some scrapped together knockoff...with bent tips.

I'm considering between paying a local shop $125-150 to perform the Pedro Sport Exhaust to my stock muffler, or going the Top Speed exhaust route for $300-350. Still not sure which way to go on this, but the Pedro Sport Exhaust is less than half the cost.

Fair point, but at 15.5 pounds, the Top Speed Pro muffler is less than half the weight of the 34.5 for the stock, plus the add on pipe.

The Top Speed product makes a magnificent sound. Try it and resell it if you hate the drone at 2,500 in 6th gear. (Or change gears.)

Good point on the weight savings. But the drone would be a deal killer. Although, I have a five speed. Can I expect a drone even without having a sixth gear? ;)

You can expect droning around 2500rpm regardless of the gear you're in. You're not really supposed to drive these engines at less than 3000rpm anyways. ;)

I'm sorry, but have you really examined the exhaust/catalyst system on the 986? To me it looks like the "engineering" you mention was done with 2 goals...

1) Meet US emissions.

2) Make sure the the car stays in it's planned class...behind the 911.

As a performance exhaust goes, it's pretty piss poor. Do tell us about all of this engineering you speak of, because it looks like it was a "it's good enough" decision made by an accountant, not an engineer.