I need to quiet down my exhaust

[acolella76]

I redid the exhaust on my car about a month or so ago and it is getting unbearable. I have ebay headers straight into a 2.5" Y pipe and into a Flowmaster 40 series muffler. It sounds NICE at WOT in the upper RPM, but between 2-2.5k rpm it sounds like utter poop. Very, very loud. Lots of bass. It hurts your head, you can't think, etc. What should I do to quiet that down? Another muffler? A catalytic converter? Any suggestions would be great!

[ak-]

A cat will take away the rasp if you have any and turn loud sounds into a muffled rumble, but that's not enough. You need a second muffler/big-resonator.

/myexperience

[acolella76]

thats what i was mainly wondering... I do have rasp over 5k but I love it. That is probably just the ricer in me though... :p

How do you think it would sound with a magnaflow in the middle?

[quickervicar]

I don't think adding a Magnaflow will help too much. I've got stock manifolds into a 3" system. High-flo cat & Magnaflow resonator and muffler. I have the same drone from 2.5-3.2k. I does sound glorious from 4-7.4k though.

[nando]

magnaflows are crap. flowmasters are loud.

you need to add at least 2 decent mufflers (plus a cat) to your system to quiet it down. Nobody here should be surprised that having a single magnaflow or a flowmaster ends up being loud, but people keep doing it anyway.

resonators don't make it quiet, they just change the tone. if you have a large exhaust, you need more than one muffler.

[kalib0y]

put some high flow cats in or a resonator. Vibrant performance makes some great parts

[nando]

a resonator isn't going to make it quiet. it will only change the tone. the only way to quiet it down is to add another muffler.

repeat: a resonator isn't going to make it quiet.

[MR 325]

A resonator will definitely make an exhaust quieter, you can keep saying it won't all you want.

OP, check out the Flowmaster Hushpower mufflers. Good for a center section and they look like cats. Another cheap option I am a fan of is adding a Cherry Bomb glasspack muffler to the center. Toss in the longest one that will fit and watch how good it sounds.

[acolella76]

Thanks for the tips everyone, but what I ended up buying a generic round muffler and a 22" dynomax Super Turbo. Now it is TOO quiet. No drone though! Only downsides are that the round center muffler will scrape on the smallest bumps and it is pretty much stock loudness, if that.

I get that the 22" muffler was probably too big, but i wanted to make sure it still wasn't going to have that weird resonating drone. What I am thinking about doing is just removing that first muffler so it will just be one Super Turbo out back. Anyone done something similar?

FWIW I'm opting to remove the generic muffler instead of buying a muffler to replace the Super Turbo because 1) cheaper 2) it won't scrape anymore.

[StereoInstaller1]

I ran a Dynomax 22" for years, loved it. Single 2.5" back to it from headers, nice and smooth.

EDIT: BTW, guys, Nando is right. a resonator might lose 1 or 2db, but virtually nothing. What it will do is fool your ears into thinking it is quieter by changing the tone...as Nando said. Trust me on this, hit it with an SPL meter, it will read virtually the same.

But, is there really a difference between actually quieting it and making you think it is quieter?

[acolella76]

I ran a Dynomax 22" for years, loved it. Single 2.5" back to it from headers, nice and smooth.

Sweet, glad to hear it. There was no weird resonance and you were still able hold conversations with passengers?

[StereoInstaller1]

No, no conversation, that was the last big stereo car.

J/K

OK, well, not really, but yeah, hardly any cabin drone. I did have a walker universal cat, now that I think about it, but that might as well be a 6" resonator.

Should I point out it was on a Quad4?

Luke