NeFaRiOuS_SLE wrote:drool... Wish I wasn't broke, and I wonder what a Flowmaster would sound like; I want to make my car sound like a classic V8.
We have a saying in the exhaust industry:
"You can't make Chicken Salad out of Chick crap. "
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Solara's, I'm referring to the acoustic signature of the Toyota V-6 engine. It's never going to be the same as a V-8.
Exhaust acoustics are measured on levels called "orders." The number of orders is of course driven by the number of cylinders in a bank. American V-8s have an easy time getting this sound due to the acoustic signature of V-8 orders. Adjust your cam profile and timing and you make the difference between a Crown Victoria and a Mustang.
The Flowmaster muffler, like any other muffler, simply works to cancel frequencies that enter its chambers. It does this through a series of partitions set at various angles to form an exhaust flow path through the muffler. Frequencies entering the chanbers collide against these partitions and hopefully reflect back into the exhaust path. (Remember: like frequencies that collide will cancel each other out.) The chamber volume and spacing between the wall and the exhaust flow determines the frequency of the reflections.
I'm not disrespecting Flowmaster. On specific applications, it can be good. But in universal applications, especially 4cyl and V-6 engines, I highly advise against it. The universal tuning is not targetted to the higher frequencies commonly found in these apps. I find the output to hollow and "tin can sounding." It's worse if you have a high duration cam on a V-6 or I4.
I studied Flowmaster for two years in my last job and made several trips to Santa Rosa to meet Ray Flugger. (Inventor of the Flowmaster) In the end, we did not buy their company and I ended up co-authoring a patent on a muffler to compete with Flowmaster. US Patent # 5,936,210
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,936,210.WKU.&OS=PN/5,936,210&RS=PN/5,936,210
In short, after my unGodly long explanation, it won't work.
LOL I'm too much of an exhaust geek to not make a long reply.
by lilm » Mon Oct 31, 2005 3:35 pm 
