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How much airflow?

L

Luke_Miller

CEG'er
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
60
Location
Florida
1999 SVT. If I put my hands at the exhaust, how much air flow should I feel? Right now, I feel very little from both the right or left side. TIA.
 
1FASTDAD said:
i doubt your gonna feel much at idol
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ummm or leave your hand there and let it get burned lol. Like 1fastdad said, you won't feel much. For you to really feel something, you are gonna have to leave your hand there so it can build pressure over time in the exhaust. After a collection of exhaust accumulates, then the pressure will be noticeable against your hand :)

But i want to know, what made you thinking of wanting to do this? Are you asking how much pressure should you be feeling? Well we don't measure pressure like that on exhausts. We measure cfm flow.

If you want to know the overall cfm flow needed on our cars, it's roughly 430-480 to maximize 200hp. Since most of the time 200hp is netted only at certain rpms you don't need a for sure 430-480 cfm flow. Like for our cars the stock svt mufflers flow 320cfms. IS that good? well flowmasters flow 350cfms....

The cat material which i assume is ceramic, have to go check which i never have done. I'm 90% sure it is ceramic, has the ability to flow 1000cfm before the pathing is too small to allow exhaust fumes.

So thinking cat material is really holding the car back is false. It's just slowing flow down before it can travel through the holes. Any obstruction will slow air flow down but too much flow will result in emptying the cylinder head too quickly and that is what makes you lose power.


BALANCE IS KEY HERE!!!!


Sorry i went off topic here. :)
 
1FASTDAD said:
always gotta over complicate it harry LOL
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Yea its a bad habit of mine. I just was in the moment and was thinking as i was typing. In the end i was going to delete my posting which i seem to do 70% of the time. I though fug it might as well post it and others will see this and maybe help them understand things :shrug:

Your butt better be coming down here. You can even bring your kid for a field trip :)
 
Thanks for the detailed info. As a novice, that really helps.

What started my question was that I had the beloved CEL and took it local store to have the code read. It is a P0420 "Catalyst System Efficiency below Limit - Bank No 1.". They guy who helped said that it could be an O2 Sensor or a problem with the Catalytic converter. He felt the exhaust and there was very little pressure at either tail pipe. According to him that indicated that the converter was probably clogged. So I'm trying to find out if he is right.

When I compared the feel, at idle, with my T100 truck there was a huge difference. From your reply I understand that I probably won't feel much. So comparing it to my T100 is not really valid.

I just took and trip and used 2 cans of Berrymans ( 1 per fill-up) and thus far the CEL has not returned. I'm thinking of doing it for the next two tanks of gas. Comments? Also, how do you tell if the converter is clogged?
 
114k....your cat is fine.

NO worries man, if it was ove 150k i would suggest getting it checked out. You are no where near having a clogged cat.

If it does fail, it would fall apart before it gets clogged.
 
In all the years I have worked on cars, I have never seen a "clogged" catalytic converter. Worn out ones yeah, scads, but they all generally just had a very few of the small holes plugged in the honeycomb matrix. Certainly not enough to ever affect the motor's performance. Maybe that's just my luck, I guess it's possible, but I don't think it's probable. The catalyst coating itself just generally gets poisoned and does not convert anymore. They will still flow fine. Now if it's one of the early Contour/Mystique sixes with the ceramic adhesion problem to where ceramic was flaking off converter interior and being reaspirated backwards through the exhaust and into motor to tear it up, that's something altogether different. That was a manufacturing defect that screwed up a lot of cars.
 
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