Psh i started when gas was 2.90 a gallon for 87 pump gas!!!

 

Gary's a little hard on equipment, but a diehard Ford Man. He always gets a chance to rip my cars down the road if he wants. One problem he did have was, he always grasped the steering wheel at the top when he drove on curvy roads. Once I broke him of that habit, I trust his driving abilities a lot more.

 

I remember those days, even though I wasn't old enough to drive....

 

I think this is where I don't get the point of the tube, since I guess my car has less sound deadening I can already hear the motor, and with a loud enough exhaust I don't feel like I need the tube.

 

The sound induction thing is becoming very common - Focus ST has it, the new BMW M5 actually has an audio track that plays through the stereo, which is even crazier.

Not to get off topic...but having ridden in new 5.0's with cheaper exhaust and now having Borlas on mine, there's a huge difference between exhaust options and it can be summed up well in five letters - D R O N E.

All of them sound better than stock, though there are differences of course, but the drone is what makes the difference if you DD your car or even do long road trips. Less expensive options, like Flowmaster, drone badly, which makes the extra cost for the Borlas worth every penny to me.

 

When I started it was around 40 cents a gallon, but for years i remember my parents paying 33 cents a gallon ( and getting all kinds of free stuff, had an attendent who filled the tank, washed the windows, etc) and it rarely ever changed..now it goes up more than that in 1 day!!! (But never drops by that much!!). I even remember as a kid we went on vacation down south and there was a gas war and i think it was around 20 cents a gallon and my dad thought he was saving a ton!!

 

Gas was .25 a gallon when I got my license. They would have gas wars with the price dipping to .15 a gallon for a week or so.... Of course....minimum wage was $1.25 then too.

The sound tube gives an artificial sound....unless you have never driven a classic this would be hard to determine. It is nothing more than air flow vibrating a diagram echoing into the cabin. No sound tube can replicate the sound of a big 4 barrel sucking in the air as one gets on it.

 

...and with a loud enough exhaust I don't feel like I need the tube.

I think this is the key to the matter- with a loud exhaust. The factory exhaust is not loud- thus the sound tube to "bolster" the sound to the driver without making the car loud to external observers.

What would be a really interesting innovation would be for Ford to develop a muffler with a "Cruise/Sport" setting. I imagine a strategically placed flap inside the muffler could allow the driver to instantly switch between a sedate vs. a throaty exhaust note. Once developed it would probably cost $30 extra/car to produce and could be a $300-400 option.

 

They already have variable mufflers, but why would you ever want your exhaust to be sedate?

 

Well, I'm way past this point in life, but- when going to pick up the girlfriend at her parent's house, it might be good not to show up in a rumbling cacophony of thunder...

Also, I go to work really early in the morning- and my lovely stay at home wife doesn't necessarily want to wake up when I leave the garage. I started up a Boss 302 and thought "There's no way I could get out of the garage without waking up the wife... unless I pushed it out onto the driveway and drifted to the next house over."

Those are two (somewhat cynical) examples, but I don't think I will really enjoy the louder exhaust when I'm stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on I-35 either (but on the weekend when I'm out cruising and going to car shows, heck yeah I want audial awesomeness).

 

When I don't want to exceed the db level at the track and when I want to creep around town.

 

Which manufacturer makes variable mufflers (I don't suppose Roush, Borla, or one of the main vendors happens to have such a product)?

If I could have a muffler that sounded like a Roush when I wanted- but could be switched to stock when necessary- that would be the best of all worlds!

 

I don't believe any of those manufacturer's would come out with such a thing. Several company's make them for imports though. X-Force makes the Varex which can become quieter or louder.

 

Removed firewall baffle today..big difference. Wonder if that foam baffle is really a filter? hmmmm?

 

Dynomax makes the VT MUFFLER. Spring operates on pressure so it opens up when you "open it up"

 

Nope, there's nothing to filter except sound, no air flows through there.

 

What bothers me about the sound tube is the obstruction and the engineering expense wasted IMO

 

Engineering expense? I couldnt imagine this would be bery difficult or expensive

 

Well, its not a garden hose, it has apparently 2 baffles, a mounting bracket, a connection to the intake tube, which probably had to be flow tested to ensure it didnt disturb anything, a single purpose pass through the Fire wall, a one way valve type thing. And to my knowledge it hasn't been used by another FoMoCo vehicle so it wasnt sitting in a parts bin. Probably cost quite a bit where I would have preferred hood struts.

 

True true