Truck Topics

The Tool Box - Exhausted

How you ever thought about your exhaust system? Other then the pre-trip check for leaks, most people don’t.  Here is something that was brought to my attention about 2 years ago. Diesel Engines produce soot – soot will collect on anything that it comes into contact with. The muffler on your truck has one job: to quite the noise. The problem with mufflers in general is they have baffles in them that cause backpressure in the engine – this is bad.

If you think about your high school car, we all wanted dual exhaust & glass packs – no back pressure – more performance. Dual exhaust on a truck is, in my opinion, only for looks. With that said an open flow-through muffler is what the doctor ordered. Yes, straight pipes will do the same thing but it will be much louder. The flow-through muffler we installed has a deeper tone but it is just as quiet as the original equipment muffler was.

When I removed the old muffler it weighed 80 lbs.; the new flow through muffler weighs 25 lbs. The original equipment muffler shipping weight is 40lbs, which means to me we had about 40 pounds of soot in our muffler.  After dropping and banging it around on the ground I dumped a small coffee can full of soot just from one end of the muffler. This 40 pounds of soot plugs up the small holes that are inside the muffler, causing restriction and back pressure, which equals lower fuel mileage and poor performance.

Mufflers are fairly easy to change but may require a torch or a grinder. If you are really handy, changing a muffler can be done in about an hour. If you are not handy any shop can change it quickly.

I only know of two companies that have flow-through mufflers: Grand Rock (www.grpipes.com) - theirs is called the QP for Quiet Performance; and Pittsburgh Power (www.pittsburghpower.com) - they just call theirs a flow-through. If you decide to change your mufflers, you can order from either of these places, and when it comes in find a shop to change it for you.