After we bundled into @Beaver bus to go to a parkrun at TE, I was impressed how much quieter her bus was and mine has a shed load of sound proofing fitted. The culprit seems to be my custom exhaust put on by previous owner. Beaver has a vintage speed but these are £550+ now. What decent alternatives are there? My bus is a cross over, 1641 type 1, with a tow bar. The tow bar runs just behind the bumper so looks mostly out of the way. Thanks - my ears are still ringing from journey home. Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
Mines a crossover , lots of sound insulation internally, got a tow bar and cannot hear the exhaust ( my hearing is ok )
I’ve got a csp on my bug and it’s quieter than the standard silencer. Smoother acceleration as well (1641)
Thats because the air and pops and bangs is kept inside it by restricting the air flow. The most fun we had at TE was a custom stainless steel silencer that sounded just like somebody hammering on a tin can unless you pushed a rag onto the centre of the round end cap of the "silencer" box which stopped it ringing with each exhaust pulse. Time for a can opener and some fibreglass ...
I took our 65 beetle to TE once, that had a great sounding exhaust with twin baffled conical tailpipes. Several people came over to ask what kind of monster engine it had, the exhaust note was really deep. It was fun to answer "stock 1200".
Stock Earnst is very quiet, lasts forever, spray it silver now and then, job jobbed. VS "stock power" exhausts are quiet, they get louder as you go up the advertised power handling. Over-speccing the exhaust can adversely effect performance at lower revs and lower revs on a stock vw engine could be most of your driving. Because my 2.4 engine falls on it's face at 4,000rpm, replacing the stock exhaust with a higher power type VS one just made it louder really, and backfire on overrun until I blocked one of the tailpipes. It still has more tailpipe dia than stock, seems to maybe go better/smoother at lower revs like this too... not massively better than the stock was though. IMO for a stock type-4 there is really no performance advantage to changing from the stock silencer, there could be a performance disadvantage and it'll almost certainly be louder to some degree. A lot of 4:1 systems drone really loudly over 50mph for example. A VS might be a bit louder, but in a good way, I don't hear mine being annoying and I'm a quiet exhaust fan.
This is the exhaust I am talking about - it is mine. My ears are still ringing from driving home. Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
I suspect that exhaust was built for looks and the "designer" forgot that the normal designs (stock or well designed aftermarket) rely on the exhaust pulses hitting baffles, not directly hitting the outside of the exhaust. And using fibreglass wadding to slow down fast crackling sound pulses to turn them into thumps. I think if I had that exhaust I would chop the end off and take a look in the hope of stuffing in some fibreglass insulation. Then weld it up with stainless wire and using BOC Argoshield Light gas or equivalent (argon/CO2/oxygen mix) in my MIG welder. (BOC markets that gas for light stainless and usual steel welding)
A bit moist underfoot, luckily the rain had stopped by the time we got going, quite enjoyed it and managed to go a bit quicker than parkrun
