What difference in sound would longer and/or wider glasspacks make?

This is actually for my truck, but relevant for mavs and comets as well.

I have a 50 series Flowmaster on my truck (5.7 Hemi) and after 11 years, the inside metal panels are coming loose and the muffler is rattling horribly.

Going the cheap route, because I have over 275,000 miles on this thing, and on borrowed time.

Getting a glasspack. Stock pipe is 2-1/4".

I am not looking for loud, as much as deep tone. Would actually prefer quieter.

Would longer glasspacks lead to deeper and quieter sound compared to shorter one? Would larger diameter make more volume?

 

Join a dodge truck forum.

 

Longer would be quieter. A bigger muffler would be quieter as well. A stock muffler would be the quietist.

 

agree... glass packs aren't exactly known for being quiet though

 

I have. But this question is relevant to our cars as well. I had side pipes which are just long glasspacks years ago and then went with a pair of shorter packs under the car but it is difficult to compare the two because of the mounting locations and direction of sound. Both sounded good.

 

Took to muffler shop and guy convinced me to swap out old flowmaster for magnaflow for decent price.

 

FWIW--Magnaflows sound EXACTLY like the Flowmaster 50 series I had on there, but about 1/3 the volume.

 

They would sound like glasspacks (which sound like crap), but longer & wider.

In fact, I'd run a stock muffler on a truck. I don't get why people put loud, performance mufflers on trucks. It's a truck, not a hot rod.

 

But it's got a HEMI!!!

The truck got about 18mpg hwy with stock muffler, 21 with flowmaster, and with the magnaflow, 22mpg. THAT is why I use high performance mufflers on my truck.

You can actually feel seat of pants increase in power with a better muffler.

Besides, the magnaflow is definitely NOT loud. The flowmaster had a little bit of volume to it, but not obnoxiously loud like some of the trucks I hear.

I had to re-adjust my stereo equalizer settings because I can almost not hear the exhaust anymore, and the radio just didn't sound right.

 

My friend's 1994 Ford Escort has a "Hemi" too (seriously).
That doesn't mean what it meant back in the '60s.

 

No, but what it DOES mean now is 360hp/360lb/ft torque, decent gas mileage, and effectively pulls my boat around. And paid off for seven years. And still in pretty good shape. Reliably gets me around town 500-600 miles per week.

 

flow masters can't flow very well, magnaflows flow well. the chambered design of flowmasters gives it very easy tune ability to sound.... (1 chamber, 2 chamber ,3 chamber) where there are only a couple designs magnaflow has... (straight through and turbo style). so I'm not surprised you squeezed out the extra mpg over the flowmaster. but about the whole why put a performance muffler on a truck... truck exhaust is VERY restrictive , they are notorious for it. so you'll pick up a few mpgs maybe when you switch over

 

I was pleasantly surprised to see how much less restrictive the magnaflows were, in design, over the flowmasters. Somewhere else on this forum, someone posted cfm ratings for many of the most popular mufflers and the magnaflows (and glasspacks) outflowed the flowmasters pretty well.

The muffler guy that convinced me to use the magnaflows said he could just about stick his arm all the way through the magnaflows, they are THAT non-restrictive.

And again, surprisingly, did not alter the sound by much. Still sounds just like it did but just a touch quieter. I expected it to drastically change the sound, and mellow it out a bit.

 

Hey, I wasn't bad-mouthing your truck. I like those. I just don't think a muffler is gonna make that much of a difference.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much of an improvement over stock the flowmasters were, and even more so with the magnaflow.