Exhaust question

[Old Skooler]

I ran into a guy last night with a 93 notch and a healthy sounding 347. He was running straight pipes no mufflers and it sounded insane. He insisted his set up was far better then flowmaster, Mac etc... I always thought w/o mufflers you lose back pressure and actually lose power, if thats not the case im running straight pipes because the car sounded wicked. Emissions aside what does everyone think?

 

[jonbacon]

Depends on what headers you are running. Everyone will tell you it loses it. I have a 67 nova II, with them on it with long tubes, sounds nasty good. and we dyno'd it and it has the same power .. so id say yeah.. this was 2 years ago when we actually tested it. MY dad told me it would lose power. so we ran it on dyno, didnt even make a difference..I would say if you have shorty headers yeah it would probably lose some.. but hell for 20 in tubign cant hurt to find out,.

 

[RacEoHolic330]

I think any unmuffled car sounds ridiculously obnoxious.

 

[2000xp8]

Straight pipes sound good for about the first 10 minutes, then you realize that your car sounds like a redneck farm truck that the owner ran over a stump, the exhaust fell off and he never fixed it.

In short, whether the power is more or less, that's irrelevant, because it's a bad idea.

 

[Gearbanger 101]

I ran into a guy last night with a 93 notch and a healthy sounding 347. He was running straight pipes no mufflers and it sounded insane.

Great description....because that's exactly how it would make you feel after driving it around for more than a day. For starters...unless you've got a deep breathing 347 stroker with H/C/I to boot, then an set of mufflers isn't going to hurt anything...and even then you'd be surprised how much horsepower a 2 1/4" exhaust will suport. Swap out to a 2/1/2" mid pipe (off road if you want it louder) and pretty much any decent set of aftermarket mufflers and you'll have all the volume you need.

 

[RacEoHolic330]

More air in = more air out

I could not believe how much louder my car got when I supercharged it. I had to ditch my 2-chamber flows for 3-chamber ones just so I could think straight.

 

[jonbacon]

I agree, with the redneck stuff.. its very loud.. Mine on my nova is straight headers used for track purposes..if you like it go for it.. but man its always gonna be loud.. just wont sound as good as a off road X-pipe and nice exhaust system.. the back pressure adds the ncie poppign a when slowign down... thats a good sound to me... Spend your time and money on a nice pipe and set of exhaust..