h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As promised, here is the short story I posted on Mazspeed.com's Ultra Garage (Look under Racing: Miscellaneous).

About ten days ago I realized I was running out of time to get my Camaro inspected. I knew at the time I had an exhaust leak over the right rear tire and that it wouldn't pass inspection. I took the Camaro to Fantasy Muffler in Spencer, OK (great guys, they do good work for a great price and they don't mind you watching them work).

I originally planned to just get the hole patched, but looking at it the guy told me, "It's rusted through, I'll have to put in a whole new tailpipe."

I agreed and after a minute of deliberation I told him to replace both tailpipes and put new tips on them. He then pointed out that he was nervous torching off the exhaust with my gas tank seeping, but he said he'd be careful and do it anyways (Camaros suck).

The exhaust on my Camaro was a patchwork of factory manifolds (with air injection!), cats, blown out glasspacks, and 2" tubing. The old tailpipes were 1 3/4" tubing welded onto the glasspacks. They included a 90 degree bend towards the wheels in each tube where they passed over the axle. The hole was after the bend on the right tailpipe.

The guy who bent the new pipes said that was the old way of doing it "The Z-28s came that way." He bent the new 2" pipes with a smoother angle instead of the 90 degree bend.

When all was said and done I drove the car to work. The first thing I noticed was the noise level. My Camaro was loud before, and the new noise level broke all previous records. When I romped on it there was a cacophony of blatting and roaring, kinda like a pack of lions being put in a 10x10 room with a herd of sheep.

Secondly I noticed POWER! My Camaro has a 305 with a nice cam (I have no clue of the specs, but the idle has a noticeable lope). It's running a very well-tuned electronic quadrajet on a stock intake. There's no hi-po parts other than the camshaft as far as I know and it has highway gears in the rear-end. Until now it always felt like it was running out of breath about the time it got to an RPM where it could overcome the gears. The tailpipes cured that. Completely. I floored it to get on the highway on my way home from work that night and the car launched like never before. I used to joke about having "All the sound, fury, and gas milage of a V-8 with all the power of a V-6!" No more. Two measly tailpipes were holding it all back. Everything I knew about exhaust back-pressure and the effects on torque, horsepower, and gas mileage has been thrown into the wind as my fuel consumption has also dropped by a quarter.