Hey guys I was thinking of chopping the muffler off my car. What are your thoughts on this? Will it add a few HP by freeing up the flow, or hurt my torque because there isn't enough backpressure? Also do u think it would be TOO loud, or loud but bareable? Thanks for your imput.

Pulling the muffler off will probably make it pretty loud. My engine has a 115,000 miles on it and with the way it has worn over time it has a lot deeper throatier sound than original.

I have also heard (not an expert at this) that too little back pressure can cause you too actually lose some HP. Something about pressure escaping to easily from the cylinders and not getting fully utilized through the expnsion stroke. I'm sure someone else may be able to agree or disagree with this in more detail.

If your going for sound and performance it would probably be better to get a performace muffler. It will have a better sound and better flow without having any real issues with low back pressure.

Like I said, I'm not an expert in exhausts, but just my thoughts on this.

I agree with SSEi95, I think just chopping it off would be a bit TOO loud. Try a Magnaflow like skza did. He used to have a nice sweet mellow exhaust sound (so he said). I believe it. This is all of course up until the point where he went exhaust **** crazy and chopped the cat and resonator off too!! lol Lee, man, you gotta record a WAV file of your exhaust, then convert it to MP3 to share with us. Thats gotta sound nuts

Later!

Besides being TOO LOUD, you will burn out your exhaust valves faster & might expereince a "popping" sound from the lack of backpressure! Try instead putting in a resonater for the cat & a better flowing muffler than the stock one. You might consider also bumping up the pipe size a little too.

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I guess showing you my old exhaust this weekend convinced you that you wanted to be just like meeeeeee!!

Um ok but seriously when i had the muffler off with the cat and resignator i didn't have a problem. it was deep, and i didn't find it too loud...you could roll the windows down and have a normal conversation, still...so i don't know what all the hype is about. also, i didn't notice any performance loss...or gain, really, for that matter.

Thanks for the imput...I don't have a lot of spare cash to throw at the car right now otherwise I would upgrade the WHOLE exhaust. I was just looking for an ultra cheap mod to add a couple of horses and make the exhaust note ummmm.....more noticable

I have nothing further to add. Take one for the team and take off your muffler. See if it makes a difference, you can afford two clamps for 5 bucks to rebolt up the stock muffler to the exhaust when you are done. Hell, you could do it with one clamp. 2 bucks!

True enough! I had a look under the car today and it looks like the muffler is pretty close to being pooched anyways, there are a couple of big rust spots that are about to be holes. I'll probly chop it off this weekend and see how it goes. Worst case senario I have to put a cheapy cherry bomb on it...L8r...Andru

Not even that! Advance Auto Parts has clamps for $.99 each. Add NYS sales Tax (7% here), and your looking at a whopping $1.06 mod.

I still think it might sound pretty damn loud though, just my $.02

Yeah but remember, your $1.06 is like $24 Canadian It'll probly be loud, but I don't mind loud. My neighbors might have a different opinion tho