Hot Rods Homemade mufflers

Has anyone ever tried their hand at making mufflers?

 

There were several threads in the olden days of the HAMB. So, yes.

 

I guess it could be done but over my life I have found that some things should be left to the pros. Scraping/sanding the bottom of a 40' sailboat, digging up clogged sewer lines and replacing roofing shingles are just a few.
Quality mufflers are not expensive and the selection seems endless.

 

Yes, way back in high school. Found some thin wall stainless tubes at the scrap yard. One was larger diameter than the other so that they could be assembled as concentric tubes. I drilled holes in the inner tube and stuffed the outer tube with curly lathe shavings. The result was a weird sound and a stream of lathe shavings out the tailpipe.

 

I know I guess my curiosity got me thinking about it today.. I may attempt one just to say that I tried..

 

True. You'd have to want something pretty weird to feel the need to make one. Unless it's a specific resto or race car thing. The ones made on here in the past have been for lakes pipes, so not really replicating off the shelf stuff.

 

LOL!! I had a 65 Comet with 200 6l in high school... I used two 1 gallon paint cans brazed open end to open end..Stock dia. pipe in near the top to about 2/3rds back and two stock dia. pipes out starting about 1/3rd back...wasn't too noisy cruising, or accelerating but decelerating in gear was spectacular!!! Reverbance with the thin wall of the paint cans in city streets eching off the buildings probably pissed people off..I sorry

 

I have a pair of stainless steel mufflers someone made and an old friend made a muffler for his Indian motorcycle out of propane cylinders. They happened to be the right diameter and had the right dome shaped ends.

 

I needed a muffler for my 62 Buick special when I was in Germany back in the 60s. I took a 105MM tank round and [empty of course] and stuffed it with steel wool...welded ends on it and installed it. Sounded kinda good for about 15 minutes when it blew all the charred steel wool out and then it had a very "cackly] sound...kinda like ass.

 

No, and would not contemplate it at current cost of mufflers.

 

I made a set one offs ( or would that be two offs?) for my father in laws lawn tractor. He picked up an older mower and scrapped the mower section, then tricked out the rest of it. He wanted dual exhaust so I bent up some conduit for the sweeps off the engine. There was only a small area under the running boards any nothing we could find would fit. Made up something similar to an old Thrush straight through. I was real proud of myself. Stuffed with steel wool and everything. Then we fired it up. Sounded just like dual, miniature Thrush mufflers on a 20 hp Honda would sound-loud and thumpy.

 

I'm a retired X-Ray/CAT Scan Tech, and in Nuclear Medicine they use a tubular container that is filled with charcoal to trap the radioactive Xenon gas used in lung scans, and then let it decay to safe levels; then they throw the tubes out. Funny thing is, they are about the same diameter and length as the old n"Purple Horny" header mufflers (those things are still being made!). There's a flange on one end that would bolt to a header collector, and the other end is rounded. I'd thought about trying to make some header mufflers with them, and still have two sitting in the garage. "You might want to stand back a little officer, that gas you're breathing is radioactive!" I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

We used to make them for the stock cars. 2 Hawaiian punch cans brazed together with a 2.5" piece of muffler pipe straight through. Loud as hell but passed a NASCAR inspection.

 

I made several sets of "mufflers" for the guys in our hobby class dirt track cars, at least we called them mufflers. The track required them, and they passed the ones I made. Two offset tubes one in, one out, in a closed can. When you looked through them, you couldn't see out the other side, class legal mufflers. They were not quite. Gene

 

[Made 19 pair so far.

 

What size and shape were you wanting to make?

 

I wasted a couple weeks & $20 worth of cutoff wheels trying it. Tried to make a pair that sounded like Douglass steelpacks, & didn't ... hint: don't use brass shavings ....

 

Is the vacuum diaphragms to open an internal baffle and make them straight thru?

 

I would like to make a 2 1/2" chamber muffler with offset inlet/outlet

 

Yes, this made me laugh. I've also used a leg of a swing set to serve as exhaust pipe on a '64 Barracuda. Rusted out quickly, but free is free.

 

Real nice work...carry on.

 

Made a pair out of 6 inch well casing (no innards) back in the early 70's, put them on a 56 Chevy pickup with a 327 and muncie 4 speed. I had drive shaft tubes out the back to make sure all the sounds were amped up. Probably one of the reasons I have hearing aids now. I was very popular with the local law at the time though.

 

What's the purpose of the vacuum servo?

 

LOL, the video of that goat ragtop ran the cat out of the living room. Never heard a GTO sound that bad in real life though.

 

Pretty cool!
A vacuum operated exhaust cut out through the muffler.

 

Yes, I made a pair for my 59 Ford wagon that I recently sold.
Copied the innards of the "SpinTrap" style muffler, made them super low profile, ( 2 1/2 inches thick), 301 1/4 hard stainless, V-band couplings @ each end.
Sounded nice, and they will probably be around another 40-60 years.............

 

Yes, the vacuum actuator opens the valve internally that allows the incoming exhaust to bypass the majority of the silencing sections. In real life, they are pretty darn loud when in loud mode and in fact, sound level measurements in dBAs show them to be similar to typical loud flowmaster style of mufflers. When closed, they rival stock mufflers and mine on my car are quieter than stock mufflers cause I really worked them over.

To make chambered style mufflers, you will need to decide how many chambers you can fit because you need a lot to tone it done to a drivable level because they are really loud. I made a set in 1987 or so to see what they did and man, they are tough to drive with. But then again, so are single chambered available chambered mufflers you can buy now

I have some end caps and plates that you could play with but they are ovals and oval chambered mufflers are tough to make because of the dividers/diverting plates have to be shaped top and bottom to fit the oval.

 

I can see why that would be so time consuming and a pain in the ass. What about making square mufflers similar to spintechs? Can you post those sound clips again please? I never got a chance to listen to them..

 

Yes, I've made a few. The most recent builds are on my 56 New Yorker, and here's what they sound like.

 

I usually make them out of necessity pertaining to size, performance & material. I flange my systems and of shelf parts are rarely avail, my last set was to replace a set of Thrush mufflers. I can use commercially available mufflers if applicable to the job, cheers Wayne