You're wanting to get personal with me? I'm not making fun of... I'm pointing out relavant facts...

I've put HUNDREDS of hours working, repairing, modding, testing, etc... on NUMEROUS cars. Honestly, more experience than several hotheads here. Furthermore, I have the track time to back it.

Either way, there are enough members who stand with me... and 100% agree. So if you want to stand up for the youngsters that are BARELY old enough to drive, go right ahead! Until then, you'll be in the minority.

 

That's what I'm thinking. Or just get a Dynomax straight through muffler, lose the big fat stock muffler and useless second exhaust outlet, and it'll be lighter and throatier than this $3k trinket. I'm sure it looks nice and all but I'm usually not concerned with aesthetics when crawling underneath my car.

 

Here's what I know about exhaust systems and it will explain why I think that spending alot of money on a muffler is a waste. Correct me if you find any faulty logic.

The less restriction in your exhaust, the better. The closer the restriction is to the head, the greater the effect. The whole point of the exhaust system is to get spent gasses out of the combustion chamber as fast as possible so that there is less restriction on the piston movement. If you've got alot of resistance on the exhaust stroke it will slow down the inertia of your crankshaft. This will require more power to keep it spinning at a given rpm. Open headers are the ideal.

Now, this doesn't take into affect idle speed and low rpm performance. It is the ideal for the peak power band. Many people will say you need back pressure in the exhaust or your engine will run like *****. They are right except the effect is not backpressure, it is siphoning of exhaust gasses out of the chamber at low rpm's. At low rpm's, the pistons aren't travelling fast enough to push all the gas out easily. The exhaust pipes help siphon out the gas. We all know that it is easier to siphon through a smaller straw than a bigger one. Open headers is like an infinitely large pipe so they suck for idling and cruising around but the engine will love it when it's in the peak power band. There are also other things to take into account like the phase shift of exhaust pulses out of each cylinder. They interact since all the pulses are Y'ed together in the exhaust system and help out with scavenging of exhaust gases.

So for an engine that is going to run right and get good performance all throughout the power band you need properly sized headers and Y pipe. What about all the other junk in the system? You've got cat's for emissions, long pipes to get the exhaust to the back of the car (don't want it seeping into the cabin and those side pipes are just too 70's), and the muffler to muffle exhaust sounds. What does the muffler have to do with performance? It only hurts performance just like the cat's and that long exhaust route. You can get better performance by designing one with less restriction. Most stock mufflers are 3 chambered so going to a 2 chambered muffler is better but the best is a straight through muffler. They offer almost no restriction and are decent at baffling sound.

What I want to know about this $3k muffler is what cfm it will flow and how many dB's of noise it is going to make at a given rpm. I'll bet I can show you one with comparable spec's at less than $200. No, it won't be titanium and it won't look as pretty but it'll get the job done.