who has made their own glasspacks, best packing material?

I got frustrated trying to find a long lasting glasspack, I really would like a porter, but it's out of my price range at the moment, So I ended up building my own stainless steel one, all I need to do is weld up the can on the core, but I still need to find a good, long lasting packing material? the good layered stuff is expensive, so I'm looking to get some input from those who have made their own mufflers, before I buy anything. with all the work on the muffler, I don't want it to fail in a short period of time

I will post some pics later, but it's dinnertime right now

 

Motocross guys use "FMF" brand loose packing for thier silencers.

Moose Racing sells a "sheet" type of packing that is less cantankerous to deal with than the loose packing.

If you use the loose packing, just dont pack it too tight.

And one other thing.... never use pink Owens-Corning house insulation!!!

 

Stainless steel wool ,get it off ebay cheap and lasts forever ,well almost

 

I had some New/Used glasspacks from a car I bought and sold. I cut open one end off pulled out the fiberglass and the perferated tube and repacked with Stainless Steel Wool I bought off Ebay. Put them back together, welded them up and put them on my '30 Tudor. So far so good.
I've have Good coments on the sound.

If I do it again I'll buy a 5 inch and a 2 1/4 sticks of pipe from the muffler shop and make my own.

 

I've been using regluar yellow house inaulation for yrears with no problems, even tried the "real" stuff a few times to see if I was missing somthing ....

This is on a 2stroke and they have lower exhst temps, not sure how it will last on a car, put its cheap.

 

I'd like to see a tech thread done on packing it here, so we get it right the first time.
What do you use as far as stainless steel wool goes, fine, medium or coarse and how much do you put in and do you need to wire tie it in place etc???

 

Or use what muffler guys from the old days did: metal shavings, gravel, nails, etc....
I tried all those a few years ago experimenting with muffler types, length and sounds.

Gravel should last forever but you need to use strong hangers for the added weight...haha

 

Corse steel wool is better than glass. lasts longer and in my opinion sounds better.

 

My brother and I made some once with the pink attic insulation and perforated tube. We used masking tape to hold it tightly to the perforated core. When you fire the engine, the tape burns off and the material fluffs up again.

We made glasspacked turbo mufflers too. Seemed to work well and lasted a long time.

Unless you need a custom size or shape, it's probably cheaper and easier to buy them, though.

 

Instead of gravel you could use glass marbles. How did gravel work anyway? Have seen plans for a very old home electrical plant (1900) where the muffler was a pit in the ground full of rocks with the exhaust pipe stuck down the middle.

 

You can try a refractory type of material called Inswool Ceramic fiber blanket

 

Gravel...? You gotta be shitting me. I'm going to try that!

 

How about that yellow colored water heater / pipe insulation? That is fiberglass as far as I know.

 

The gravel gives more of the rapping sound, especially with louvered inner cores.

 

Way, way, way back I had a set of Smithy's steel packs that sounded great on a flathead ... if I'm not mistaken, they were called Hollywood mufflers, but I may be a bit confused.

For some related pics, look at http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=207040

 

I went to Menards and got some copper scrubbing pads. It's a super coarse steel wool type material. I put one scrubbing pad in each pipe.

 

i just made my own spirale baffle it will out last any fiberglass and sounds great

 

I'd like to see some detail on how you did it, that sounds like a good solution. What thickness material did you use etc???

 

I was thinking of fabing a couple of dump mufflers, depending on how my headers lay out. I was thinking of using that light weight lava rock gravel. It certainly should stand up to the heat and wouldn't weigh much at all. Some of that stuff is so light it will float.

 

i dident take any pics of them when i was building them. I used 4 inch exaust tube for the out side put a 2inch exaust tube for the center and cut 16gauge sheet metal in half circles kind of like a doghnut cut in half. than spaced them on the 2 inch tube on an angle to make a spiral patern hard to explain in wrighting they do sell them for about 200 a pair. google it to see a pic they are very simple just takes somm time. the brite side they cost less than $20 in matierial

 

I just put a new exhaust on my coupe running 2.5" stainless under the car (it had 8 side pipes before). I used a perforated motorcycle baffle which I modified to fit the tubes and then used stainless steel chore boys (actually the generic version I got at my local grocery store) for baffling. I think they were about $3.00 for a pair. They worked slick. They would have been a bitch to unwind, but I found that they open like a hair scrunchie and fit right over the larger diameter end tube and shrunk tight to inner perforated tube. I used about 4 or 5 per side. The sound is really throaty. The car sounds real nasty, but not overly loud. It was a huge improvement over the side pipes that had 24" of perforated tube per pipe (x8 pipes). I can now hear the sound of the wind on my windshield and have a normal conversation in the car. The motor is a 307 SBC with Speedways TruRam manifolds and a mild cam. I got a HUGE perfomance gain out of the new set up as well. I would definitely use the stainless scrubbers again.

Good luck

J-

 

I cut the end off condoms and slide them over a perforated tube..........the "rap" changes as the RPM increases.

 

I'm all for making my own stuff-but when you can buy glass packs for under 20 bucks a piece-is it really worth it?
Your time and running around has got to be worth something.

 

thats fine if you want your car to sound like everyone elses you could also go buy a kia that would be cheaper than building a car but what fun is that

 

well I built a stainless one, I'm trying to get away from fiberglass, it sounds fine at first but burns out, I'm going to look for the stainless scrubbers, I built my entire exhaust myself out of t-304, and found a really hard to find header, so I didn't want to cheap out on the muffler, I looked into buying a cherry bomb and cutting it open, then replacing the packing, but then I gutted a couple of used aircraft mufflers for the perforated center tubes, very heavy stainless, and made the rest myself

 

This is the new muffler, Bobby Brock did these beautiful welds for me in the last picture , thanks buddy! the center tubes are recycled from an aircraft muffler. The outer shell is just steel right now, as I have to order some more stainless



splitting the two parts


cut off

facing parts

 

uhh, cherry bombs?

 

sort of, except I don't want fiberglass blowing right out, right now it's cost me a six pack for the welds, and I need to order the 15 dollars worth of stainless for the outer tube, other then that it's all made from stuff I already had, everything is stainless, or will be, except for the end caps I machined out of steel, they are so heavy that I'm not worried about them rusting through

 

why bother with packing, I've made a few sets of stainless mufflers, glass pack style without any packing and they sound consistantly loud which would be the life of the bomb you are driving, if you want it quiet , go buy a beamer.

 

has anyone tried ca-ca? i'm sorry. i need some sleep.