Ok, so I have an 84' Corvette with an LT1 swap. H/C/I type of setup, long tubes into a 2.5" OBX catback (no cats but it does have a resonator with an H-pipe built in.). Prior to this setup I had a 3" magnaflow catback with no cats at first and an X-pipe. Both systems have had a relatively mellow sounding idle. The car doesn't have a certain tone that I like when a cammed car is idling. For example here is a video of the Camaro I used to have idling. (I loved that car's idle)


Now here is another LT1 corvette that has a different cat-back and sounds mean at idle.

That car even has a much smaller cam than me currently.

Is the sound ALL in the mufflers? I had magnaflow and now OBX and both sound similar. It's too tame at idle, it's missing that raspy? tone. Not sure how to explain it or what it's called but it almost sounds a little too muffled.

FYI: The Vette has OBX longtubes in every video.

 

Here is the Magnaflow without cats.


Here is the Magnaflow with cats.

 

Here is the car with the OBX cat-back.

 

Are you referring to the chop at idle that is more apparent in the 3rd gen vs your Vette? If so, what are your cam specs?

Mufflers can certainly change the tone and whatnot but there's a lot more that goes into the true sound that you hear coming out of a car's exhaust. It's hard to compare one cammed car to another especially with different cams. The chop at idle from a cammed car comes from the overlap in the cam. It's entirely possible for a small cam to chop harder at idle than a larger cam if the small cam has more overlap. It all really depends on the valve events. In addition, there are many other factors that will alter the sound such as the compression ratio, intake/exhaust valve sizes, if the heads have been opened up, idle speed, etc etc.

 

Cam= 232/240 .578/.574 110 LSA

I'm not really talking about the chop but it sounds muffled and by comparison that blue C4 has a nice "open" sounding exhaust. I'm not sure how to explain it. My car is quiet where that blue C4 sounds fairly loud. IDK what the term is so I have no idea how to explain the differences I just know you can tell easily that the blue C4 has a cam where mine you can't really tell because it's such a mellow tone.

 

Ok gotcha, I totally know what you mean my Vette is kind of the same and it annoys me. I don't know anything about the OBX exhaust but I will say that I thought my car sounded muffled when I had magnaflow exhaust as well. My long tubes and gmmg exhaust only car had more soul to it then my heads/cam car with long tubes and magnaflow. Once I ditched the magnaflow for true duals with bullets the sound came alive, it was like night and day different. So with that said I think it's your mufflers that are muffling the sound to a higher degree than you or I might like.

 

Current idle of my car. (Yes it's the same car, I just did the 91-96 bumper cover swap and painted her)


But do you see what I mean? It's so quiet the cam is hardly even noticeable.

 

I do remember an article that and a few videos showing that the x pipe would change sound quite a bit, but that was for tone and not volume. I do think your mufflers might be too baffled. But like said above a lot of the sound has to do with engine configuration.
If you can easily unbolt the mufflers I would do that and start it up to see what happens. Also resonators and mufflers will make for a quiet idle.

 

I'm thinking of trying muffler deletes. I have a resonator pipe so I think with the muffler deletes it will be a bit louder but not crazy loud. Also the cat-back is an OBX and the mufflers are straight through (perforated tube surrounded with packing). 2.5" pipes.

 

I concur, you could always try a glasspack style muffler, but it seems like you already have that. Do you have the stock airbox?

 

No I'm using the SLP "Claw".

 

One piece of that Vette video is it's in a garage kinda helping the tone. You want a rough mean sound, do an 18" magnaflow bullet, or a corsa catback maybe.

 

Thats good, alot of times a stock airbox really muffles the engine sound.

 

I think that's a great idea. I went on YouTube to listen to some LT1 OBX clips and the car was cammed and I could barely tell. Seems like those mufflers do a lot of muffling. Post up a video if you do the muffler deletes.

 

Who would have thought!