Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General with and w/o resenator

I took my resonator out yesterday and it sounds great. The exhaust note is much lower and louder. Rasp goes away w/ in a few minutes. Now my ride sounds like a F*ckin' SVT!!!!

Mine is not an SVT, but I took mine off too. I was told by some that it doesn't rasp on a normal v6. When I took it off there was no rasp at all, so I was a believer. Unfortunatley I did this all while the cars cats were slightly plugged. ( I wasn't aware at the time) Long and short I just got the cats repaired and the exhaust is flowing right again and yes when cold there is a rasp. When warm it sounds quite nice and deep, but there is a drone. I'll live with it for now but when the weather turns cold again I may need to put a hi flow or a glass pack in.

thanks fot all the info, if i do it ill let everyone know what i think

I'm not sure of the correct terminology here for sure, but the 'resonator' is the one located at mid-ship on the car, and the muffler is the one in the rear? Is that right? Well, I removed the one at the rear, and added a new elbow section of pipe and installed an oval chrome resonator tip off of a wrecked Porsche944 onto it. And I left the muffler/ resonator (?) unit that is in the middle of the car installed. I really like the sound now though. It has a very deep low sound (due to the long hollow tailpipe that leaves the first old muffler. It does have a rasp when cold though, but when warm, it sounds really good and the rasp is gone. I just use that as inscentive to never get on it until it is warmed up (engine lasts much longer anyway if you don't beat on it when it's cold)

A tiny V6 is never gonna sound like a bigger V8. To a certain extent (however small), the engine's displacement has something to do with the sound of its exhaust. Then of course, the number of cylinders, V or I engine configuration, design of the exhaust manifolds, etc., etc. I plan to remove my resonator to see if I like the sound. If not, I'm going to check out Toadster's Edelbrock RPM 5542 performance muffler idea.

Karl

I took a similar approach to you, except I replaced the rear muffler with a spiral muffler similar to the Moroso:
Moroso Spiral Flow muffler



The sound is louder than stock however it does not have the loud deep bass of an SVT exhaust without resonator or with resonator replaced by a glasspack. It does have a more aggressive, higher-pitched throaty tone which is unlike any other Duratec I have heard. According to Moroso, that muffler design employs noise cancellation which is something that would affect the lower frequencies more. Hence my lack of deep bass. I would like to try replacing the resonator with a high-flow muffler/resonator in the hopes of deepening the tone but without making it too much louder overall.