I'm looking at upgrading my exhaust but on a budget so any recommendations would be nice. Also, I was wondering if I could just switch the header and exhaust without doing anything else.

 

IMO i would not mess with the header, most aftermarket headers come with high flow cats. Which will throw a check engine light, or require a tune. Its basically going to be hard keeping any header mods budget friendly. Not only this but there is not much to be gained with different headers.

If you are chasing sound, do a complete catback exhaust. This will replace the entire exhaust system from mufflers straight up to the headers with larger diameter piping. Depending on the catback brand, it can be very loud, to subtle. Personally run the Malian Race Performance exhaust on my R53, its loud, throaty and likely to obnoxious for most. Do some shopping around, check out youtube videos regarding different catback brands and sounds on an R53. If you find a sound you like, get a setup similar.

Best of luck!

 

There is no such thing as a cheap header. The eBay ones will end up breaking on you within a year, no need to ask me how I know. The milltek without cat, can be found at Waymotorworks, and he seems to have the cheapest price for it. This will make the car loud and raspy, I lived with it for a year, but moving to Florida and everything made of concrete and all the overpasses, it started to get on my nerves. I found a milltek cat on FB, added it and bam, that was the ticket. Exhaust is loud enough, but not so loud that it drowns out the whine, in fact it nice to actually hear her whine like a little b!tch again. Moral of story, unless you plan on it being a track car, keep the stock header until it breaks.

 

@Jason Cornelius Beautiful reply, especially the whining part LOL.... There's a reason that an OEM mini header with cat is over $2000 and "sneed4speed" ported header with cat is $510. One works and one doesn't.

 

The milltek header with cat is around 1000-1100 or so, bolts in and as close to stock as you’re going to get. There are very easy ways around the cel, without tune, I ran catless with a spark plug anti Fowler drilled out on my rear O2, no cel. The sports cat I had to use a 90 degree O2 sensor spacer, again no cel. I’m tuned, but told Adrian to leave those codes alone. I’d rather them pop up and figure out what’s going on. For example, blew weld on eBay header throwing a 2096, which made me bite bullet and buy the milltek. Most recently I threw one, after cat install, for the lower O2 sensor, the exhaust gaskets I picked up decided to leave the chat. If my stock header wouldn’t have broke, I wouldn’t have messed with it at all.

 

Well with an R52 S the only exhaust that is actually specifically made for the cabrio and clears the cabrio braces is the Milltek. Good thing too as it is the best for torque gains and sound as it doesn't drone. So that is the go to cabrio and even hardtop exhaust that you can't go wrong with.
https://waymotorworks.com/milltek-ca...st-r52-cabrio/

Now you can also add a header if you want, but there isn't huge power gains in them so we tend to lean towards doing other mods first. But if you do want a header we have our own custom WMW version of the Milltek that uses a V band clamp to seal better than the 2 bolt flange the standard Milltek has, and also this will allow you to cut the pipe and install a cat of your choice and easily put it back together.
https://waymotorworks.com/milltek-ra...d-r50-r52-r53/

 

HP gains are minimal with any aftermarket exhaust. If all you're looking for is a nice throaty burble research the "one-ball" exhaust mod -- $150 outlay at a muffler shop. Save the money and put it into a tune.