Exhaust questions!!! 3" Exhaust or 2.5" Exhaust or 2.25" Exhaust?

[rikubot]

So, what should I go with for pipes, brands, styles, size of pipes? I have a 440 up front

 

[bbcharger71]

Exhaust is one of most under looked part of setting up your car. Most people will tell you "bigger is better" but not neccesarily. The bigger your exhaust is, the more torque you will lose. Likewise, the smaller the exhaust, the more you will choke you engine. You have to find a balance. Is this a stock 440 or what?

 

[wannadrag]

2.5",3" is a waste of money unless your over 500 ponies

 

[1969CoronetR/T]

I have TTI headers with a 3" x exhaust. It may be overkill, but I have no problem with scraping the ground.

 

[rikubot]

bbcharger71, that's exactly what I was thinking. Its built all stock except for the edelbrock carberator and a couple cosmetic accesories like valve covers and air filter.

Thanks guys!

 

[383man]

I have TTI headers with a 3" x exhaust. It may be overkill, but I have no problem with scraping the ground.

I use the same setup. 2" TTI headers and 3" system to the rear of the car with an X-pipe. It works great for my 63 but I do make about 600 hp. Ron

 

[RS23VOA]

I had Hooker Competition plus headers, 3" pipes and Flowmasters on my 340 Dart. It sounded awesome but was too loud me me. I couldn't hear myself think!

 

[dvw]

I had Hooker Competition plus headers, 3" pipes and Flowmasters on my 340 Dart. It sounded awesome but was too loud me me. I couldn't hear myself think!

The TTI systems are pretty quiet in 3". Is hugs the floor pan on a B-Body. You don't need 3" at your level of modification. But will you modify it later? I run my Volare at 11.0 thru 3" mufflers. My Challenger runs 12.50 thru 2.5" a TTI system and is very quiet.
Doug

 

[RustyRatRod]

2.5",3" is a waste of money unless your over 500 ponies

About two weeks ago, I put a Summit 3" cat back on my Ranger. It has 2" pipes off the manifolds into a Y and then goes into the main converter with a funny lookin dual 2" collector. Out the back of the converter, it has a 3" outlet that necks down to a 2" pipe then the muffler and a 2" tail pipe. I replaced all that with 3" pipe straight off the converter, cutting the 2" portion off and welding the 3" pipe directly to the 3" converter outlet, mounted the little turbo muffler and installed the rest of the 3" pipe. I can tell you first hand it made a huge difference. Now, it rarely unlocks the converter going up hills with the cruise on. I haven't driven it enough to see if it helped mileage yet, but I bet it has. That's with a 3.slow liter V6. It really added some pep. All I was goin for was a sound upgrade and muffler replacement because my muffler had a rusted hole in it. I never thought it would have added anything but it sure did.

 

[rikubot]

All very helpful input everyone. I don't really plan on doing a whole lot to my motor yet, but say somewhere down the road i want to do a stroker, would 2.5s be okay enough to handle that? That wouldnt put me over 500, right? Right now I'm just lookin to make my car sound good (not too loud) and have a healthy motor and not jack up backpressure or whatever I could screw up. Its mostly just a cruiser, but i want her to be mean as well :]

Again, thank you all. You all sound very informed and think about all possible angles.

-Mike

 

[cngordon]

I think you'd have trouble building a stroker out of a 440 that didn't give you 500+ ponies

 

[1969CoronetR/T]

I agree. I stroked my Demon 340 to 416 and it had over 500 horsepower. My largely stock 440 has over 400 horsepower at the crank.

 

[Wookie316]

3" is worth the extra money I think. The sound of a TTI 3" and a magnaflow muffler is awesome.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plcp&v=jZSgfChZi2M

Ignore the loose fan belt.