[wanab5150]

WELL, HALF THE VIRDICT IS IN……

The mufflers came back and they looked like jewels. Steven let me use his rack at "Full Throttle" in Reno to do the install and I put them on Thursday morning. I burned up several sets of gaskets doing all the fitting before he sent them off so the final cost was $1350, and I did the install myself. Steven added a finger or two when needed.....OK, maybe a little more. It's easier with another set of hands. They fit right up and the coating looks very chrome-like compared to the stock Superformance pipes which turned sort of flat silver over the first 2000 miles. Time will tell if these stay this nice looking.

When I fired it up, I couldn’t believe my car could sound so F…ing mean. It sounded like what I think it should have sounded like when I bought it. The pop from the cam is unbelievable. It sounds like a Nascar. And yes, it is loud! The sound reverbs off buildings on a 4 lane street. On a two lane street.. …Holy Sh&%!

Hot August nights was all last week until Sunday (today). Honest to God, I have had only a handful of comment about how cool the car sounds in the last year and a half. I do get a lot of “how nice it looks” and how much people love Cobras. But during Hot August Nights, the comments were over the top about how bad (good) it sounded, and I completely concur!

Remember, I turned the internal louvers toward the engine for a little more sound deadening. Chambered Exhaust told me about 4 Db less. These are also packed. I parked at the /Full Throttle booth at Hot August nights and had the opportunity to fire up another 427R Roush (just like mine) right next to my car. He has the louvers pointing away from the motor so they virtually absorb nothing, and they were unpacked. I had Mike from Full Throttle fire up both cars as I stood about 20 feet from them and I couldn’t hear any real difference. Mike and Steven both say my car is just a touch quieter…I didn’t hear the difference.

As I said, these suckers are loud. If you take it easy it’s pretty easy to deal with. When you jump on it, I swear, people 2 blocks away turned around to see what-the-hell! I wouldn’t trade those looks for the world now. The looks I will now get from my neighbors will also be what-the-hell, but in a different way…Screw’em! I hope none of them read this.

Something I didn’t expect was the lack of the drone as in the stock mufflers. The Superformance had a sound that seemed to drone in your head under cruising conditions. I never thought about it until the switch. Although these are substantially louder, they don’t seem to annoy me as much and I drove the car 120 miles home today without a headache and no earplugs. I will probably get some anyway as I’m sure the noise isn’t that good for my virgin ears. Cruise is actually quieter at freeway speeds than the stock mufflers. It was the damn drone that was so irritating. Push the pedal a touch at cruise and it comes back to life until you’re back to cruise speed.

I was unable to do a performance evaluation as I was concerned about my jetting. Reno is at 4000 ft. and my car is jetted for sea level. It ran really good there compared to the stock mufflers and did not seem to be as rich, but that would make sense because the pipes would lean it out and help at that 4000 ft altitude.

I babied it when I got down to 1500 ft. altitude coming home. I did however do some brief acceleration tests in 3rd, 4th, and 5th looking for a lean pop or any other signs of leanness, but it ran flawless. No overheating, bogs, flat spots, ping, detonation ….not a single hitch. When I got home I was dog tired, but I pulled the plugs to check the color…..I just couldn’t wait for tomorrow. They actually looked perfect. They have 6000 miles on them, but I thought they might show signs of leanness anyway, but they didn’t.

I am going to put some new plugs in it tomorrow and run it pretty hard and read the new plugs. I have a feeling they will look real good. Almost all Holly’s are pretty rich from the factory and it may be real close, if not right on now. I will update the jetting tests and performance feel as soon as I get a chance. The performance test will be seat of the pants compared to before the muffler swap, but I should feel something. Regardless, it was more than worth the time and effort. It's like being at the track every time I fire it up! ……Be back soon with the final eval. Tom