It does make it a little bit louder. My exhaust sounds a little raspy, but not quite ricey. Yours will probably sound a lot better since you are getting a camaro style muffler. My muffler is kind of like something you would see on an import. I would replace all of the piping with the 2.5" piping. Any muffler shop should be able to easily bend this for you. However, it could get kind of expensive when you get to welding a flange on for the exhaust manifold connection. I would just cut it off between the cat and flange and re-weld the flange onto the piping. It was pretty easy for me because I just replaced a four foot section of piping between the exhaust manifold and the bend that goes over the suspension. Anyway, good luck. Heres a pic of my muffler, so you know what kind of style I'm talking about.
