I got bored, that and my header flange gaskets fell apart so I had to replace them. So I figured while I had it apart I might as well make a recording of what the beast sounds like un-corked. As Bill Cosby would say, "I started it up, and it was killing people...".
I put the mic about 6 feet away from the car. I had it underneath and it was overloading the mic, big time, so I moved it away. Hear it for yourself. Its a doozy at 1.3 megs. If anyone knows how to make it smaller without degrading the quality much let me know. I am somewhat new to the sound recording thing....
There were a couple of cars running open pipes at Thunderhill in April. Man when your sat in the hot pits waiting to go and one of those monsters starts up, you know your on a race track! Even more so when one rips by you on the front straight doing 110mph with their foot on the floor!!! Man that's exciting!
Thunderhill is WWWAAAAYYYY the hell in the middle of nowhere, they don't worry to much about sound!
Long ago when I was going to get my exhaust system fixed (after installing T5), I drove down to the muffler place open header. Needless to say my head was pounding and I had one of the worst headaches I have ever had. I guess with helmets on it would be better for the drive, but it is still pretty loud, and fun!
Having run a number of different engines with open headers over the years before going to muffler's in the mid 90's, I must say the 351W is most like a SBC, to my ear anyway. After putting that engine in the car, it sounded just like my buddies Camaro's and Chevy II's.
IME, and I've run or worked on almost all permutations of the SBF, the best sounding engine I've ever run was a very high compression 289 (over 13:1) running small diameter headers (1.5") and 2.5" x 24" collector extensions (this was the 11.20's engine in the race car). Running on 112 octane racing fuel and spinning an 8" converter, it sounded and responded to the throttle like a minature top fuel engine and sounded just like an Indy car engine (remember the old Gurney Eagle??) turning 7500rpm in the lights. My buddies often told me they could tell when I was making a run just by the sound; it was that unique.
That sound is really the only thing I miss about running uncorked; even with a helmet, unless I wore earplugs, I'd have a headache by the end of the evening.
i droped in a 460 into my f150 and ran that into town about 7 miles, w/ just headers. i never had a problem w/ it, but i sure don't like the smell of undercoat melting on the bottem of the cab!!!!!!!!!
My son and I still laugh about starting a 351W in a project car with open long tube headers; the forgotten tennis balls in the headers blasted out and bounced off a wall some distance away.
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