exhaust system

I see alot of guys with huge exhausts tips that make alot of noise. does this actual produce more power or is it just for show? what type of exhaust would you recomend for my 2.2L?

Its not the muffler really. Those are normally just straight through. To add power by exhaust, you need to do headers back. Meaning you buy new headers, new cat, muffler, have it all installed. Normally costs about 500-600 total with installation. This gets rid of all resistance in your piping. Therefor at higher rpms when flooring it, your engine doesnt stress to push the exhaust out, and allows more power. Now some cases you may SLIGHTLY loose a bit of low end power. But not really.

The faster air gets out, the faster air gets in. The faster air gets in, the more power you get. Therefore, bigger pipes, high flow cat and muffler which allow for more air out = more power!

The faster air gets out, the faster air gets in. The faster air gets in, the more power you get. Therefore, bigger pipes, high flow cat and muffler which allow for more air out = more power!

While what KustmAce says IS true, what most people fail to realize is that if you haven't ported/polished the head(s) and intake runners and installed a matched header with really good scavenging properties-any muffler mods aren't really gonna make THAT much difference in power output.
What good is a kick-ass intake/exhaust system if there's a flow restriction/restrictive turbulence in the head(s) themselves?

well man you can really get any muffler you want. If you want to stay stock looking i can reccomend you Dynomax or magnaflow...But if you want the really loud and obnoxious i would tell you to go with Ractive or Apexi or somthing along those lines. Don't go with the cheap 90 ones from wal-mart becuase they will crap out on you eventually.

i had a ractive muffler on my s-10 and it made the 2.2 liter engine sound like shit... just stay away from those... now i have a Flowmaster with three inch tubing and it sound a lot better... i also have seen a Z-Power on a sinfire and it sounded good also...

I have a ractive on my 2.2L 02 cavy and I love it. It's got a very low throaty roar to it. I've heard a couple other ractive mufflers on cavies and they all sounded good. I would recommend them 100%. As far as horsepower, I wouldn't expect to notice much increase at all. A muffler is definitely not a hp mod. It does stiffin it up in from around the 2500 to 3500 rpm range, but not much.