Exhaust pipes.

[bonnevista]

Many of you will know that I've had my car for a long time - 10 years and 6 months in fact and during that time I've driven it (not quite) 170,000 miles.  I'm 35,000 miles into it's second engine.

When I bought the car, it had a single 2.5 inch exhaust system.  It was poorly fitted, but was whisper quiet and I thought I'd just leave it alone until it wore out.

About 5 years ago, I decided to upgrade the exhaust to a dual 2.25 inch system.  It was initially too loud, so I had a cross over pipe and resonators fitted.  This made it 'acceptable', but it was a little drony (sp) inside - but I could live with it.

Fast forward to Christmas 2010, when I fitted the new 455.  Yee haa, the new engine is great, but now the drone is too much.  So much too much, that I've put up with it for nearly 2 years until now...

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to look into the possibility of reducing the in cabin drone from the exhaust system.

I went to a local muffler shop (that will actually work on cars other than Fords, Holdens and Toyotas) and they said they'd fix it by replacing the whole system from the mufflers (including the mufflers) back.  The cost - $450.  Food for thought.

I then decided to employ the services of my exclusive private researcher - Google, to see what I could find online about exhaust drone.

There's a fair bit out there concerning exhaust drone.  Much of it being talked about on Mustang forums, so I'm assuming that Mustangs suffer from this.

I came across a new (to me) technology called a 'J' pipe that's used to fix the drone.

      http://forums.justcommodores.com.au/attachments/ve-holden-commodore-2006/137846d1332841648-rapid-exhaust-ve-dg-j-tailpipes-photo0015.jpg

In the picture, the pipe that's facing the wrong way is sealed at the end and is there to fix the drone only.  It doesn't add or detract from performance.  I also noticed that a local muffler shop in Wollongong, Rapid Exhaust, have put some R & D time into making these things up to go into Commodores and Falcons.

http://www.rapidexhaust.com.au/

I went to see the Rapid Exhaust guys last week to see what they thought about my car.  They reckoned the J pipes would work, but of course, they haven't done any R & D on my car, so it would be their best estimate and the cost was $150.

The bottom line was that the drone is gone and you can now actually hear the engine note, instead of the swarm of locusts buzzing instrusively around your head.

I wish I'd done it earlier...   

[LeighP]

They were doing this sort of thing back in the 60's....if you've ever heard of the Arvinode exhaust for Mustanges, the mufflers were tuned with the exhaust wave pulses i nmind and had external tuned dampening tubes. Nice piece of tech.

Those J tubes are just like the shape of the tubing on the inlet track of a Fairlane's 5.0 V8 from the early to mid 90's.....same idea, stop intake noise.



Glad you like the mod on the exhaust...great value!