Have a 48' Ford Tudor Sedan street rod (ZZ4 crate engine w/Sanderson headers) and want to change the exhaust from 2" to 2 1/2" and add Flow Master mufflers. Looking for something fairly quiet, but with a little growl. Current mufflers (might be Flow Master from 2001) sound good, but are 2". Someone suggested that 50 series (for big block) would actually be quieter than the 40 series. I'm so confused!! Any experienced insight?? Thanks!!!!
Flowmaster 50's are quieter then 40's. I installed a pair once and thought they were too quiet. Went back to 40 series. The bad thing about about mufflers is you never know how they will sound until they are installed. The Pontiac in my avatar has way too quiet mufflers and I'm trying to decide what to replace them with.
I have a 70 Series on a newer vehicle and added a auger before the muffler and 1 in each tail pipe. You just never know what drone will be inside at speed and what will bother you... Age has something to do with too.
I run Power Stick mufflers on my '50 Ford with a 302 Ford. They don't drone at cruise but really come alive when the loud pedal is pushed!
Flowmasters are the entirely wrong type of muffler for a cl***ic car IMO, the sound of a chambered exhaust is dissonant with the style of car. It's kind of like putting 18" wheels and rubber band tires on a cl***ic car. Turbo mufflers or gl*** packs are the right match, my preference would be turbo's, as they are a little quieter and don't have that rap under heavy acceleration or deceleration, and the tone is a bit mellower. Find some turbo's with 2 1/2" inlet/outlet and that's your best bet IMO. An alternative would be a Magnaflow style muffler, which is basically a glorified gl*** pack, i.e. a straight thru design with perforated inner tube surrounded with fiber gl***. They're just bigger and heavier, and quieter, but still have that "gl*** pack" rap when you nail the throttle. But stay away from the chambered style mufflers, it's the wrong sound, unless you're building a street machine.
keep in mind that the for/aft location of the mufflers in the exhaust system will effect the sound. also, are you using an H pipe? as Gman said , too many variables to really know for sure how it will sound a friend had Flowmaster 40's on a stock 2 barrel 283 chevy and it sounded like ****. on a `40 Ford i did for a guy he insisted on flowmaster 40's with a 2-1/2" exhaust even with me warning him. he soon tired of the noise and had it changed to turbo type mufflers in my opinion, the best sounding car i ever did was a `49 Ford Woodie with a 350 chevy 330 HP , headers , 2-1/4" exhaust with Turbo type mufflers mid way back and an H pipe
California turbos if you can find them. I hated the drone from the 70 series flowmasters I had on an ot daily. They were not bad when idling, but at speed on the freeway they ****ed!
FWIW, had Magnaflows on my 63 BelAir which were way to loud. Drew too much attention upon acceleration.
Not a hot rod but my 2019 Silverado 2500 with the 6 liter has a Flow Master 40 series muffler running thru 3 inch pipes. It has a really annoying drone sound from 55 to 65. Over all the sound is fine but a 50 series muffler might have been a better choice? Really sounds good when your on it.
I like the turbos myself. They can be very quiet when necessary, yet sound great under hard acceleration. And no drone.
I have a ZZ-4 in my Anglia. Sanderson shorty headers and am running el-cheapo turbo mufflers from Summit. At idle my nephew refers to it as an old mans car. Put your foot in it and it has a real nice tone. Just loud enough to sound like it's not got a fake engine. No drone, but a drone is usually from all the pipes being pretty straight with not many bends. I have some bends. The exhaust exits within the rear of the rear fenders (basically all the way to the rear). Hope this helps.
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