Thanks fellas. Won't be around much, went up to the Bench and see much the same of why I "left" in the first place.....I'll check back every now and then, I do miss b's'ing with those of you that are my friends on here.... Oh, yeah, forgot the car won a photo contest. I'm in the taillights section: https://americancollectors.com/articles/appreciate-the-details-winners-2022/
Got big whitey out of storage, finished up the new 2.5" dual exhaust (8" Cherry Bomb packs in front of Hush Thrush mufflers to keep the 472 mellow), and took for it's first roadie of the year. Still plenty of snow up high for snowmobiling, but should be able to get the really nice cars out of hibernation soon.
Thanks Rich! It's a great car, I've driven it to Vegas and back and on tons of road trips and it's never done a hiccup. I'm the 2nd owner and I've got documents all the way back to it's original purchase, including all the oil changes and gas fill ups even....Getting it up on the rack to do the exhaust showed me just how rust free it still is, not a spec anywhere....Most people actually prefer it over any of my other cars.
Looks great! Please talk us through the use of the bullets up front. We have had a recent discussion about the dreaded drone.
Thanks Bill. Well, it started out as a stock single exhaust (that's still the original 2.5" single pipe that it came with on the drivers side, we just reused it and got rid of the Y, then made the passenger side pipe. (Guy gains about 30 RWHP on a 472 by going from single to dual 2.5"). At first we just threw some off brand Super Turbos I had sitting around off a 350 Cutlass I had on the car with the new duals. Whitey sounded like a grain truck and the drone would make you sick. So I decided to quiet it down a bit and get rid of that nonsense, so in my experience with about 40 cars that I've done custom exhausts on, the best way to do that is with a perforated tube style muffler or glasspack with a packing material to absorb the noise (Magnaflows and the knock offs of them, perforated tube style ONLY glasspacks like Cherry Bomb and Thrush brand). The Hush Thrush mufflers I put on back are like a Super Turbo, but instead of just the tubes in the muffler, they also have a packing material to absorb the noise and frequencies around the tubes. The car was still a little loud for a Cadillac, so I used the perforated tube style 8" Cherry Bombs to mellow it out just a little more, and now it sounds perfect. Throaty, deep, until you get on it. In my experience, any chambered muffler like a Flowmaster or a regular Turbo or Super Turbo you're asking for drone because the frequencies and noise just bounce around inside a metal box chamber with deflectors or tubes but nothing to actually absorb the noise. Likewise, using a regular "louvered" style glasspack will also create drone, as the louvers bounce the noises around and create turbulence. An added negative for the louver style packs is that they absolutely KILL horsepower. Perforated tube mufflers do basically the same function as a straight pipe, while actually absorbing noise into the packing material. If you go back in this thread, you'll see that my '60 has long perforated tube glasspacks only with no after mufflers, and they're located in the stock muffler location directly under the driver and front passenger's feet. Absolutely no drone or resonance in the car whatsoever despite them being in the worst possible place to create it. My Mach 1 is running dual 3" with Magnaflows behind a 552" big block with dumps in front of the rear axle, and there's absolutely no drone in it, either. It's all in the muffler design, you need it to absorb noise and spit the rest out the back with as little turbulence as possible, and a perforated tube style muffler or glasspack is the way to go for that. Here's some pics of the Hush Thrush as well as a pic of their perforated tube style pack from their website I like to run (Cherry Bomb packs are the same style), and a pic of the inside of a Magnaflow, which is basically a bigger version of perforated tube glasspack. I'm also posting a couple pics of a "standard" style louvered glasspack, which most brands are, and you can see how they would kill flow as well as create turbulence and the noise would bounce around in them. Hope this helps.
Should also mention that the closer you have your mufflers to the engine, the bigger effect they'll have on quieting down the engine, so even 8" glasspacks make a significant difference right up close to the manifolds. It probably would've sounded just about right with the mufflers mounted where the packs are and no packs, but there isn't room for a full size muffler there.
75 degrees today, so got the '60 out of hibernation and drove to work. Was a long weekend, time for a windows down nap.
Only for today, then back to 50ish until the weekend, then we're back around 70. Spring is here finally, along with the crazy weather swings.
Bored at work....figured I'd chuck a couple random images from last year up whilst I sit on my ass....
Early start to driving season. Put about 100 miles on after work tonight, supposed to be mid 50s this weekend. Mess with and drive the cars Saturday, snowmobiling Sunday is the plan. Love this time of year.
Fired up and out of the garage for the first time of the year, 19 degrees out this morning...gotta take it to work for a bit then I'll find a nice road to take it down this afternoon.