Exhausts and rice-boy dorks

A more recent trend is the big exhaust tip. Big tips do nothing for power but can dress up the back of your car. Some enthusiasts like to install ridiculously large tips on tiny stock tailpipes or on stock cars. As a warning, this is not cool and the people that really know, even if they know just a little, are not staring at you because your rides clean, they are really thinking "rice-boy dork" and will joke about you later to their friends! You may even find pictures of your car featured on Internet websites making fun of goofy looking cars!

If you are on a tight budget, please save your money and don't get a big tip until you get the performance exhaust system (and maybe the motor) to go with it. This advice will preserve your dignity. Some big tips feature resonated cores, which quiet the exhaust's note by a few dB. You can spot these with their usually perforated or mesh inner pipes. These big tips are actually functional and we will not laugh at you if you are sporting one of these. As a final reminder, remember that cops like big shiny tips also. Nothing tells a cop pull me over and bust me like a big ass tip.

A disadvantage to the straight through muffler is that it is louder than a reverse flow type of muffler. Usually a straight through muffler needs a small sub muffler or a resonator to keep the exhaust quiet. A resonator is usually a small, perforated core glass pack placed somewhere in-between the catalytic converter and the main muffler. Like the main muffler, the longer the resonator, the better a sub muffler will be for noise reduction. A Walker Magnum Glass-Pack is a good muffler to use as a resonator. Almost all of the pre-made performance exhausts feature resonators. A resonator will get rid of the tinny Honda Civic rice-boy noise. It will leave a deeper more powerful sound from your exhaust.

When designing your own custom exhaust it is important to remember to make it as quiet as possible. Loud might be cool to you but remember that a too-loud exhaust is perhaps the number one harassment ticket given to performance enthusiasts by your friendly local law enforcement officer. If you are considering the new LED lit flamethrower tips, please don't read my column anymore!

More Exhaust Pipe Tips

As we stated in last months edition, mandrel bends are the only way to go when fabricating an exhaust system yourself. If you are making your own exhaust you can buy pre-made mandrel bends from Burns Stainless, Kinsler, Bassini, Magnaflow, Hooker or Summit Racing. The bends can be cut into the exact angle you need and welded together to make a free-flowing, no neck down system Beautiful Indy car quality TIG welding is preferable but high volume MIG welding makes welds that are plenty strong and serviceable if not the most beautiful. Take heart in the fact that almost all pre-made exhausts are MIG welded. Don't ever let them talk you into a larger diameter crush bent system though. Crush bends cause stagnation and loss of exhaust gas velocity even if the bigger diameter can make up for the flow loss in the crush bends.
Pipe Diameter Guidelines

Some basic exhaust pipe diameter guidelines for non-turbo cars are as follows:
1500cc-2000cc motors- 2 inch
2100cc-2500cc motors- 2.25 inch
2600cc-3000cc motors- 2.5 inch

Add ¼ inch to the pipe diameter to optimize for NOS use. NOS increases exhaust gas volume. Remember that this may be too big for optimal operation off of the bottle. For turbo motors 2.5 inch is the minimum size pipe that you would want to run, even for the smaller motors. For 2000cc and bigger motors 3 inch works well and for bigger motors the biggest (usually 3.5") that you can find is appropriate. It is almost impossible to have too big of an exhaust on a turbo car.

With our tips, you can even buy all 304 stainless mandrel bends, stainless mufflers and hangers and make yourself a super trick all stainless system that is superior to most of the pre-made systems for less money. Get if polished and show it off!

Next we will get into the specifics of how the mysterious bundle of pipes called headers work and how they complement your newly built performance exhaust.
Well that's it for this episode I will be adding more to this in the next installment so make sure you tune in! Feel free to e-mail me with your questions on plasmaim@yahoo.com and I will do my very best to answer your queries.