Your first uncorked trip, to the muffler shop...

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Abodybomber

Abodybomber

Breaking street machines , since 1983.....:)
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In the "day",you installed headers/you drove to the local muffler shop . " Deans Muffler's", was the place. The " locals high school hot rodders" baptism by fire....Seen one guy/have his car rope towed there.. Most of the high school guys,simply ran down the main drag. And the local P.D.,accepted it....... (early late 80's).... If interested .share...
 
I drove my Valiant to the muffler shop with open headers, it was Exhaust Pros in Waite Park.....appointment was at noon so I had lots of traffic to drive though on a Monday thru town....think I got the car running for the first time 1 or 2 days earlier. I had just insured it that day so if a cop ran the plate it probably showed up as not in the system.....my brake lights were not working, no hood on the car and yes, I was nervous as hell but super excited and grinning ear to ear.....no tickets and a ton of noise....and it still sounded mean with the new system. Got home, fixed the tail lights and started to break in the car.....:burnout:


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Just drove my Polara the 13 miles to the exhaust guy last fall. With 3 inch exits out the side just behind the front tires, compression of slightly more than 9.5, and a 284/.484 cam, it was awesome. My six year old daughter INSISTED on riding shotgun, so I had my wife follow just in case things got fumey. When we got there, I told my daughter that the exhaust would be out the back after the job was done. She said "Are you gonna make it louder, Daddy?" I said no and she started pouting. Not sure how I could have possibly made it louder, aside from a larger engine or more compression, lol.
 
Didn't take mine to the muffler shop with open headers but I couldn't wait to drive it so I drove it down the street with open headers, no hood, bumpers, fenders and no interior. I had real bucket seats, that is I had a bucked upside down on the floor LOL.
 
Not a Mopar but... It was 1978, just got done with some modifications on my 1967 Firebird, including headers (which I later swapped out for HP manifolds), a new turbo 400 tranny with a b&m ratchet shifter, and a 4.11 posi.

I picked up the car with open headers and drove it that way for about a week before I could get it int the muffler shop for a set of 2 1/2 inch dualies with some Magnaflow turbo mufflers.

Occasionally I 'uncapped' the headers and drove like that, never got a ticket! Ya gotta love the mean rumble of a big block with open headers!

Side note...

The ONLY car that ever beat me street racing was a 340 Duster... :burnout:
 
...funny you brought this thread up... I have been thinking about what it will be like to drive my Dart (with open headers) into that same muffler shop 30+ years later. I'm looking forward to it!!
 
Yup. LOL. My first and pretty much only was summer of 1970, I traded my 63 Chev which I didn't have very long (drove it on leave from N Idaho to San Diego) I traded it to a father of a troubled son who the father didn't want to let loose (anymore) with a Road Runner. so I ended up with a 69 383 4 speed RR.

I don't remember where the shop was from NAS Miramar, but the air station "was a ways" from just about everything. Anyhow, I sawed off the head pipes, wired them up out of the way, and literally roared over Miramar road to I-5 and headed S a ways.

I had called ahead to this muffler shop and made sure they could do it that afternoon. I don't remember what they charged, but it seemed reasonable at the time, 'specially as that was before I knew how to gas weld, LOL

After I got a part time job at the station Auto Hobby shop, a friendly Navy E-6 machinist taught me how to gas weld. After that, I had little need for muffler shops, at least for simple stuff like header collectors and mufflers.

I have no photos of the 69 except on jacks at the shop.

My old 63 before I got rid of it, and a day off at the shop with friends. From left, one of our 60's Chev shop trucks, a "Plum Crazy" Cuda who I don't remember, a Poncho ?Ventura? (Nova) of one of our RADAR guys, my black '64 426, a friend's 68 RR, and my 70 440-6

This is all gone now, the Marines have paved it over. Our shop was about 6000 ft down the runway beside the "high speed taxiway" and off the rear of the "bore site range." One of the big hangers over near the tower is behind the flag behind the '63, looking NE or so
 

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We drove uncapped sometimes all school year. Up until our senior year, all we ran were those old Thrush beer can header mufflers and nothing else. lol They sound like crap with an exhaust system, but as header mufflers they sound damn good. When we could finally afford it, we went to Casteel's Muffler Shop. Long gone of course.
 
Rode my chopper for 2 years with a set of 12" pipes on it.....they were short enough that under throttle the combustion process was being completed as the mixture was exiting the pipes...had a friend tell me it looked like a torch on wheels when I was going home at night.....
 
Don't remember the first time... done that with 3 or 4 different setups at least.... funniest was sending my wife to the muffler shop (I think her first trip with open headers) in the cuda with open headers... her and all 4 kids in car seats! They were doing construction on the road in front of my house so she had to sit in traffic and all the construction guys were giving her the thumbs up. They would hear her rumble up and then give her a funny look when they saw all the car seats and kids!
 
Abodybomber said:
In the "day",you installed headers/you drove to the local muffler shop . And the local P.D.,accepted it....... (early late 80's)......
Click to expand...

We can't do that anymore?


Yeah, I took mine to a local Midas shop for a side job from a recommendation from someone in our local mopar club. Had a 72 Challenger with a 70 340 engine. Showed him a picture of the Max Wedge system with h-pipes and cutouts and wanted him to do a similiar system on my Challenger with cutouts.

Boy what a hack job he did on me.... Instead of straight pipe to the side cutout and then a 90° for the mufflers, he just cut y-pipes and used them for the transitions. A few years later when taking it apart, found out for the H-pipe; instead of cutting it to the shape of the pipe and welding it, he just took a gas torch and blew about a 1 1/4" hole where each end of the h-pipe connected to the main pipes - instead of making the hole match the inside of the pipes - sorta defeats the purpose of the h-pipe... :wack:
 
On my 67 Satallite, 383 car. When I took the engine out to rebuilt it, the bolts on the manifold downpipes were rusted, so I cut them with a hack saw about even with the oil pan, and the firewall bulkhead.

I stored my car at a friends house, about 30 miles from my house.

Well I put the engine back in, and started it etc.

The time had come to drive it home, I chose to do it about 7 at night. There were 3 ways out of the neighborhood. Soooo,,,,,,, I went the easiest way out, and it was blocked by a cop due to a accident..... back up turn around...... go the other way......blocked because of the same accident, so I go the longest way to the freeway, exhaust blasting the neighborhood.

So I finally made it to the freeway, and head home. The exhaust is blowing out right at my feet, making it feel like I am driving a 150 degree bass drum down the freeway, my feet were baking hot, yikes, what a drive.
 
I never made an "uncorked" trip to the muffler shop.
I have driven my cars to the muffler shop after installing headers, though. However, out of respect for my neighbors, and people in general, I've always bolted up a cheap, or used set of header mufflers for the drive the the shop to have a new exhaust system installed.

I purchased a set of Hush Thrush turbo mufflers about 35 years ago, and I still have them. each time I've installed new headers on one of my cars or trucks, I simply bolted them on for the ride. Once there, the shop tech would remove them, and when I picked the car up, they were always in the trunk, by request, for use the next time around.
 
I was given a 440 powered c-body wagon by a guy I knew who hung at the shop I was working at in south Philly. He had his own garage and let me pull the drivetrain out there. I found a '73 Cuda' in the tradin times for $600 that was missing its 318. The car was manual disc brake, 727, no a/c, powerbulge hood and 3.91 sure grip. Didn't take me long to pull the small block trans and get the big block in the car. I used two short sections of the c-body y pipe to get the car running and drive it from philly to concordville which is about 25 miles away to another shop to hook up the dual exhaust to the y pipe stubs. Man that car was LOUD! And a whole lot of fun too. It ran mid thirteens at 102 at the track and none of my buddies cars could beat it.
 
inkjunkie said:
Rode my chopper for 2 years with a set of 12" pipes on it.....they were short enough that under throttle the combustion process was being completed as the mixture was exiting the pipes...had a friend tell me it looked like a torch on wheels when I was going home at night.....
Click to expand...

Not in a car, but my dad was plowing with our one 8N, and the clamp broke off that keeps the manifold and exhaust pipe together. Would through fireballs out the manifold like you wouldn't believe, haha.

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I've never figured out why Ford figgured it was such a "hot" idea to run a tractor exhaust out along the ground like they did. Somewhere, some time, there's just HAD to have been a hayfield fire.........
 
67Dart273 said:
I've never figured out why Ford figgured it was such a "hot" idea to run a tractor exhaust out along the ground like they did. Somewhere, some time, there's just HAD to have been a hayfield fire.........
Click to expand...

I got into a fix one time like that. Using our other 8n....was raking hay and the chain popped off the roller bar rake. I was looking straight ahead and the hay got balled up in the rake. Got so much hay packed up in between the tractor and the rake could not get the two apart. Had to run to the barn to get a hammer to knock the drawpin out. I am surprised the hay didn't catch on fire considering the exhaust was dumping right into it.
 
I put headers on my 318 Sport Satellite and ran it open header from the SanDiego Navy base to ElCajon. Getting ready to get on the freeway and CHP pulls up right behind me....oh crap...fixit ticket here I come. I crepe onto the highway and he doesn't pull me over...wow. This was in 76.
 
I never towed my cars to the muffler shop. It started in the 80's with my first musclecar, a '65 Olds F-85 with a homebuilt 355 Chevy/3-speed. It was loud, and it sounded bad-a**. You couldn't pry the mile off my face with a crowbar!! There were MANY cars since then, as I put headers on almost everything I had. If they made headers for it, or if I could make it fit, I did it. Camaros, Firebirds, Mustangs, a Belvedere, trucks, V-8 Vega's, ect.
My favorite shop was 4-Star Mufflers in Battle Creek, MI. They would make pipes up for any car I had, no questions asked. They never did a bad job!
 
I'm in one of the few places where you can run open headers in 2014 and get thumbs up from the cops. Around here local noise ordinance is nonexistent till 10pm cause we have a major cruise in every friday in the next town over so its not unusual to see an old high comp hotrod cruise around with nothing more than zoomies. Ive even seen machines resembling full blown drag cars roll through with no questions asked.

Also the next town over on the other side of me has a smaller cruise in every other saturday.
 
Drove my 55 chevy with fenderwell headers to school for a week.the vice principal escorted me to the auto shop and had the hush thrush. Muffler s welded on for me...
 
When I changed my 79 Ford 4WD Van over to dual exhaust I ran to the shop with the engine console off and was only running with the manifolds. 460 engine 6 inches away in a closed van, that was a loud trip.
 
67Dart273 said:
I've never figured out why Ford figgured it was such a "hot" idea to run a tractor exhaust out along the ground like they did. Somewhere, some time, there's just HAD to have been a hayfield fire.........
Click to expand...

I have the optional vertical stack on mine. Never had a problem with it.
 
Early 90's had a 83 bronco with the 460 stick shift. Drove it to the muffler shop 20 miles away at 7:30 in the morning thru a couple towns open headers. Cold outside windows down so my eyes wouldn't burn from the fumes. Had a good headache after that ride...
 
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