Flowmasters Or Old Glass Packs??help

fuck yeah!!! i've been saying that for YEARS, glad there's those out there who agree with me!

i'm going to put another vote in for the magnaflows FWIW...i love them on my car and every other car i've heard them on. i've got about 2 1/2' after the muffler and it exits right behind the rear wheels with a turndown. great throaty sound and really screams when you get on it but very little resonance. also has a very classic sound. i'll see if i can get a quick vid/sound clip for ya.

 

The closer they are to the engine the louder they usually are.

 

here's the sound with horrible vid, both in neutral and in drive with a walk around to show the idle sound. couldn't rev it up too much because it's late but you'll get the idea

check it out

of the two you picked though (to stay on topic) go with glass!!!

 

Smittys....love em

 

Glasspacks are like fine wine, they get better with age!

 

my kind of guy

 

with straight pipes for example i want to have straight pipes on my 56 chev pickup but i dont know if there will be a drown, and are smithys really that quiet??i was thinking about them for the second choice. I got a beefy 283 that screams and i knwo that will make a huge different on sound

 

i have one ride with straight pipes. there is no low frequency drone. in the car you can't hear it idle, dead quiet INSIDE. at highway speed, it's a constant high frequency loud popopopopopopop. if you drive cross country, it could get old, i suppose, if you're lame.

 

I'm rockin' a mildly cammed 350, shorty headers, 2 1/4 inch exhaust, and cherry bombs dumping in front of the rear wheel and I think it sounds killer. Throaty idle, plenty of balls when your revvin'. I agree that Flowmasters just sound too modern and Mustangy most of the time. I have heard them sound good a few times, but just a few.

 

I have Smithys on my flathead and they are quiet as a stock car....was running straight 2 in pipes on last hopped up 350 and it sounded great...

 

re: the comment on glasspacks:

I've been runnin' 'em on damned near everything I drive for the past 25 years; the first thing I do when I get a fresh car home is cut away the existing muffs and stuff in a set of 'packs. If the 3-1/2 OD formed steel shell type are used, they're pretty much indestructible - the current ones on my daily driver have been there for three years (including Michigan winters) and the OEM paint is still on 'em!

I've tried just about every exhaust setup that you can imagine, and 'packs are the way to go. The 'trick' in getting the sound right is to select the appropriate length and location. in some instances, I've even gone to a pair of 'packs in series (one up by the motor and one waay back as a resonator) to cut the rap on a hot mill.

Finally - at less than $20 a pop (I paid $17.99 each for the last ones) they are literally cheaper than prebent pipe! Feel free to experiment; if they don't work for ya...toss 'em.

 

Glass packs, straight pipes or Smithys on hot rods. Cherry Bombs are $12.99 at the farm store. Can't beat the price.

 

Flowmaster= Camaro Glasspacks=old school. I have some old Cherry Bombs on my Sport Coupe,luv em

 

ohmigod i love glasspacks ( 1 2 3 View All)

 

Flowmasters can end up making you car sound like you are smuggling trash cans. Go with the glasspacks, put them on backwards for a deeper, throatier(sp) sound.

 

That's great info, thanks. I prefer the way glass packs sound and you truely can not beat the price.

 

I have Flowmaster 40's behind my 302 and they sound pretty tough. They are pretty loud though - and they drone on the highway, so take that under consideration if you do a lot of 60mph cruising. Mac makes some good sounding mufflers too.

 

Exactly. This is what is so great about glasspacks they just keep sounding better and better.
The Thrush glasspacks are a good choice, but I ran the Flowtech Red Hots (cheapy glasspacks) from Summit Racing 17.95 each, the shortest ones they make with 2" inlet and outlet, mounted as far forward as possible on my Fairlane with a Y-Block. I love the sound, and know they are only going to get better.

 

Cherry Bombs!
Flowmasters are for pc people wanting to have a muffler and pass inspections.

 

I run Cherry Bomb glass packs on my 4-banger, split pipes, 1 glasspack per pipe, dual exit out the back

I love it... the wife isn't so keen on it...

So it must sound about right...

 

I agree 100%. My oldest son has Flowmasters on his 350 and they sound "tinny' to me.

I just installed a set of Brockman steel packs on the grandsons 289 and they sound great. Brockmans can be ordered on the net and cost about $60 a pair. Bockmans are available in three lengths and in steel pack or glass pack. Advantage of steelpacks is they sound more consistant over time as opposed to glasspacks that get louder over time.

 

I used to work for Walker and the Dynomax mufflers were tons better than the Flowmashers in the testing I did. With a large, open cabin car like a bubble top you are more likely to get drone at driving RPMs. Rashy is right, placement is about half of it and displacement (size of the muffler) is the rest. If you have long pipes in a long car, you'll get standing waves. Long waves equal deep sounds. If you are in the wrong spot with your box, you'll never break up the wave (think of an oscillating spring, at the end, you can't hurt it, in the middle, you bust the oscillation).

Thrush are great because they are cheap. Try a set out and if you don't like them, go for the Ultra Flow or Dynomax mufflers. Ultra Flow are straight through so it's not robbing horsepower but it is also not doing much for low frequency, only high freq is absorbed by the glass packing. Dynomax are usually a tri-flow design.

I got canned there and I'd still use the damn things so this is in no way a bull shit endorsement.

Trust me, I'm an exhaust engineer!! (www.bosal.com)

 

Oh, and an H pipe (cross over) never hurt anybody either. It will mellow out the tone because it will have cross fire cancellation where straight pipes from each bank won't do that.

I've heard to put up in the air, draw a paint line down the pipe, run it until the paint burns off. Where it stops burning is where to put it.

So much for being an exhaust engineer...

 

I've got flowmasters on my '59 Biscayne right now and I'm pleased with the sound. I think like the others have mentioned, placement and pipes have a big influence on sound. My car has a warmed up 350 with 2-4's and hooker long tube headers into 2 1/2 pipes. The mufflers are in the stock location and 2 1/2 pipes all the way out the back. When I was doing the exhaust I put short pipes with turndowns in front of the rear wheels just to see how it would sound, and it sounded like shit. It was real tinny like one of those pro fairground mopars and camaros from the late 80's. Then I ran the pipes out the back and it dramatically improved the sound. Nice rumble, not tinny, interior drone at highway speed is not noticeable, and it sounds cool when you get on it.
That being said, I'll probabaly run some kind of glass pack on my El Camino when I put it together, just to try something different. I already know I like the sound of the flows, so I need to experiment.

 

I'm running flowmaster hushpowers on my cad that end before the axle. I like 'em but I'm also a GMB Soooooo.....

 

The Flowmaster Hushpower muffs are supposed to offer the same basic sound of a glasspack. I have heard them, they sound good to me. Nothing like the hollow tin can sound that is usually associated with Flowmasters.

 

So if i put 2 inch straight through on a hopped up 283(301) on the 56 pickup, it wont be that bad for instance..going to vegas, 25 hours one way..or what about glass packs cut them open and take the packing out of them and weld em up? would that sound good?

 

i still dont know what im going to do on my 56 pickup, any help with the question from 2 months ago haha

 

Flowmasters suck!

 

Had an old timer tell me something about the sound they used to dig in the fifties (when he was a kid) was the sound of blown out mufflers. Said they would hop on the Freeway, get goin' 60, shut the engine down and then fire it back up Crazy bastard said that would cause the loudest bang(blowing out the mufflers) and from then on it was the best sounding exhaust ever! I'm a little tipsy so I may not have the details straight but it was something like that.....