make it sound better

[HeWhoKillz]

What can I do to a 91 corolla to make it sound better, engine wise or something. Exhuast kit or something? But nothing that is gonna make it sound like all the Honda civics, like a pissed off hornet.

[wrightz28]

Tone is determined by the baffle design inside the muffler.

[HeWhoKillz]

Could you explain to me what baffles inside a muffler is? I don't know much about the exhuast part of a car.

[wrightz28]

Baffles are plates in the muffler that as the exhaust is being pushed to exit the system, the baffle redirects them to cancel out noise. This is why a car tith no muffler is loud as all heck. The more baffles in the muffler the quieter it will be, however, the engine suffers performance wise since the continually redirected exhaust hampers the motors ability to breathe.

This is why you'll see often when someone asks "whatcan I do to add power to my car?" the response right off the bat is to get it breathing better by installing better flowing intake and exhaust systmes.

Hope that clears it up a bit. If not, check out the websties for some muffler companies flowmaster has a good one, they'll have a "how it works" tutorial.

[SpinnerCee]

Any car will also sound "better" if you remove the restrictive intake tract baffling and tubing and change from the standard factory air box to an open element cone style air cleaner.

Much of the sound a hot engine puts out is the sound of the valvetrain -- as a matter of fact, the valvetrain design is where the sound difference between say, a Chevrolet/Ford/Dodge single cam OHV V whatever, and an "import" dual overhead cam style engine. For a more "racy" example, the valvetrain design is the difference in sound between a NASCAR OHV V8 engine and an Indycar OHC V8 engine [although, I'll add that while a NASCAR engine revs to about 9,000RPM, an Indycar revs to about 20,000RPM] -- you could say that for race cars, both have the same [open] exhaust system design, but you would never mistake one for the other.

The factory goes to great lengths to silence underhood noise [at least to the cabin] by routing the intake around and under things to muffle this noise, and by placing the intake inlet [where much of the sound will escape] as close to the front of the engine bay as possible, facing away from the firewall. Simply remove the intake inlet at your throttle body and start the car and rev it a few times, and you'd be surprised how much "better" your engine will sound.

[HeWhoKillz]

Ok, I'm a dummy on cars, I'm learning as I go and so the only way to learn is to ask questions. I got really lost on taking things off the front of the car and stuff. ould someone put it into words one of much less auto knowledge could understand. I know where the intake is and it connects to the exhuast, but what about it now?

[SpinnerCee]

The intake and exhaust are two independent systems that are NOT connected to each other -- they are both connected to the engine on different sides literally.

The "intake," the way it is used here, is the air cleaner and all of the usually plastic tubing (designed to be quiet) that leads to the throttle body -- the throttle body is attached to the engine by the engine's intake manifold -- this is usually aluminum -- and is attached to the engine cylinder head(s). Air goes in here -- generally, the more air you can get in here through all that stuff, the more power (and noise) you can make.

On the "exhaust" side of the engine head would be the exhaust manifold, the cats (catalytic-converters), and cat-back exhaust components (tailpipe, muffler, resonator) -- Air goes out here -- you can legally change the stuff after the cats with larger diameter pipes and less restrictive mufflers. Generally throttle response improves and noise increases with a less restrictive exhaust.

[HeWhoKillz]

So I'm guessing that on the front of the engine, at least mine, the part that looks like four different tubings combining into one seeming to come from where the pistons would sit is the exhuast manifold. If so, I thought all along it was the intake, cause I knew that part was connected to a long pipe like thingy that was connected to other tubing materials but eventually led back to the tailpipe. So would just getting a different exhuast system be the better option? It would it be easier to do all that which was explained yet got me really lost. lol

[SpinnerCee]

An intake system is probably easier becuase it is all underhood, somewhat cheaper, simpler, and you shouldn't have to deal with freeing up the dirty rusted bolts and stuff you'll have to deal with when you tackle the exhaust system.

To do the exhaust, you would basically replace at least the muffler/tailpipe -- some need to be cut/torched off to replace -- everything you can do here is under the car, so take a good look underneath at what's there -- follow all the tubing from the exhaust manifold back -- there should be a downpipe, a catalytic converter or two, then either a long pipe or a resonator that looks like a muffler between the front and back seats, then the over-rear-axle pipe, then the muffler/tailpipe.