I love glasspacks but an old friend of mine in his early 70s told me about a muffler that is discontinued now. I cant find ANY information on them. He called them dougles or mcdougles something of the sort they are sort of like glasspacks but have metal scraps inside such as nails and other things to make them louder than glass packs. if anybody knows anything about these the information would be much appreciated.
If you want your glasspacks louder, take them off, pour some gasoline in them and roll it round, then light them. It will burn the packing out of them.
I've heard of hollywood mufflers, that were apparently hollow inside and would make the exhaust echo, and amplify the sound of otherwise straight pipes.
Are you maybe thinking of a steel pack? Same as glass pack, but packed with coarse steel wool instead of spun fiber glass. There used to be a steelpack made by Douglas, might still be around. The most popular of the steelpacks was the Smithy.
You want LOUD? Maybe you want chambered exhaust? just don't drive in my neighborhood,I'll call the cops on ya! Damn punk kids! Doc
Dual straight pipes arent terribly loud, if you run them all the way back to the back bumper. I have them on a 292 and a 350
Thanks for the help but currently i have stock manifolds into one cat, i cut off the other one and am running a straigh 3inch pipe back but by the end of next weekend i will have put on full length headers and a pair of thrush glasspacks but i was hoping maybe i could find something else, theyre my favorite glasspacks. i really only need them to add some muffle and to hopefully give a little bit of backpressure till i get my pipes hooked back up since i dont have the money or know how to weld them up. ill look into those douglas mufflers. were they louder than glasspacks. and if i do the gasoline trick will i still have some back pressure? is it like the old water hose or grease packing technique?
In the 60s the common thing was to get the glasspacks hot, then put a garden hose hose up the tailpipe to make all the fibreglas break and blow out, leaving the exhaust a lot louder. I know a guy who did that with engine turned off but somehow the water got very hot, turned into steam, and blew back on his leg causing serious burns from waist to ankle. He had to go to Physical Therapy for weeks and they peeled off the new skin each day as it grew back. They told him he could have been crippled for life.
ill be sure not to do that. Getting rid of the packing... is there still some backpressure added, or do you loose some? because im gonna be short on it after this i need a little bit. Thanks for the help as ive always read, yall are quite helpful.
Steelpack mufflers on a Plymouth or Chev 6 make more noise than straight pipes - nice, pleasant noise, not cheap racket. They do their best work on decelleration. The Douglass was one of the mellower brands, Porter had a deep "motorboat" sound, and up here the Fenton was the rappiest (is that a word ?). The reputation "Smittys" have to this day came from the original Smithy muffler which was still sold for years after glasspacks became more common. Nothing is sold today that comes close to any of them ... I had the good fortune to talk to Bill Huth in the 1970s - he told me if a customer demanded a LOT of rap, they packed the guy's mufflers with gravel from the alley out back. 302
302GMC that sounds like a good idea.... my 3 inch straight pipe with my converter sounds alot like my dads boat as you were saying. though i have a 302 v8. i like the idea of the gravel... does anyone think that packing them with nails and other hard peices of metal might amplify the sound and make it raspier or anything?
Why do you need backpressure? All motors will perform better with less backpressure. It might "feel" like theres less low end performance, but test after test on the dyno prove that no performance is lost. It sometimes feels like you lost low end performance because you get more gains on the top end. FWIW, burning out the packing won't change the flow of a glasspack, only the sound. It's still a straight through design. You mentioned that your running a Cat? That will provide you all the backpressure you need anyway. As far as sound goes, "hard" packing material like gravel or something of than nature will cause the sound to bounce around. "Soft" material like fiberglass backing will absorb it.
WEll i wont be running the cat for about another year. im very short on money since im only almost 16. i only have the money for the parts im buying at summit saturday. im going to put the headers and glasspacks on myself... and in a year have my headers hooked up into a straigh pipe and cat like i have now. so ill have 0 backpressure... and i need the low end power for towing and things, but i just want a litttle backpressure, not much.
Though I can't say for sure, I've heard that your year bronco doesn't have provisions for a true dual exhaust system. Most of the broncos I've seen have side exit duals. Glasspacks are still made, plentiful and cheap. Go to Pep Boys, ask for a set of Cherry Bombs, and just run em. They'll be plenty loud enough for ya without having your truck sound obnoxious. BTW, since this is a traditional rod and kustom message board, the advice you get here will often reflect the views of traditional hot rodders. You might want to look to 4X4 message boards with advise about your truck. Good for you though for working on it though
Thanks, i also belong to a bronco forum but to tell you the truth my heart is into muscle cars and rods though. My parents would never let me get a muscle car though so i have this. by the second week in april i will have taken my base hp of 185 and beefed it up to 270-280 from my work. i appreciate both sides of it, but for what i do, you guys would be of more help. And your right broncos cant really have duals that exit straight back because the tailgate and glass back there are known to possibly leak and fill with fumes. there are things that can be done though, im going to basically be running open headers with thrush glasses on them for about a year, no pipe.
Smithys are glasspacks these days. I *think* Brockman Mellow Tones are the only true steelpacks left...I'm happy to be corrected about this though.
Purple Hornies are steel packs and loud as hell. I to prefer staight pipes on a Y Block. You can have all kinds of fun with them.
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