Silent silencer ?

There comes a point where as much noise comes through the walls of the downpipes etc as out of the tailpipe. And stainless steel is worse in this respect - perhaps because it's usually thinner.

You need a modern, petrol engined car of at least 4 cylinders and in tip-top condition. The car should be as mundane as possible, cars with sporting pretentions tend to be louder. The standard silencing system on most mundane runabouts will be very quiet. I seem to remember my late 1.6 astra was particularly muted.

Road noise is by far the biggest creater of noise above 20mph. Replace the wheels with small, narrow steel rims (4.5J or 5Jx13 should do), and to those rims fit tyres no wider than 155, with an 80% profile. Choose a fuel-economy tyre such as continental eco-contact, as less rolling resistance should mean less noise.

Bear in mind that handling may be compromised. You can't reduce road noise without compromising grip.

Probably not the ideal vehicle for quietness.

May I ask why? This does seem a bit bizarre.

-- The Dervboy

Reply-to address is valid as required by my news server, but is a spam box and is never read. My real e-mail address is thedervboy{at}btopenglobe{dot}com (substituting "globe" with "world").

bollox.

Tyre noise is caused primarily by the impact of the tread blocks with the road, choose a tyre with less blocks and get generally less noise.

Mich Pilot Primacy, Toyo T1S, Continental Sport Contact II,all very quiet.

"DervBoy" mumbled:

Not sure that's always true...mine seems to be mostly wind noise, but design has improved over the last 20 years.

Gets noticeably quieter when it starts to aquaplane at 70...but there's still a heck of a lot of wind noise!

I may have misunderstood. I thought he wanted to make it quiet to passers-by, rather than specifically target interior noise. When cars pass me (as a pedestrian) at 30-40mph, all I can hear normally is tyre noise. Sometimes I can notice engine noise but only on old worn out cars/diesels/gary boys with baked bean cans protruding from the rear.

The Dervboy

"DervBoy" mumbled:

Ah, yes, sorry. Rather lost the drift for a while. I blame having a room full of children swarming round me.

I don't want to preach, but just enjoy them... It's all over too quickly ! :-)

Andy

Thanks guys !! But if you can let me know if there is a silencer that will produce the minimum of noise (both outside and inside the car (Golf Mk 3 GTI)) I would like to know what it is...please...please...?

What have you got on at the moment? I expect all the aftermarket performance flavoured pipes will be louder, and a VW one may be you best bet for being quiet.

Everyone gets the same complete thread ! I'm sure if anyone has the answer to your query, they will post it. It would be rather perverse to know the answer and keep it to oneself ! It's just chit-chat. :-)

Andy

Point taken, Andy...and I suspect that Doki is right - aftermarket ones are probably all noisier than the VW stock item - I was hoping to learn otherwise ! (My original silencer is rusting and on its way out - it's the original factory fitted one - over 65k miles and 8 years - not bad eh?)

Thanks to all Robert

If you're aquaplaning, I'm not surprised there's wind nose. Probably a fair amount of swearing noise, too.

Tom.

Good for a petrol car. Our escort diesel still has the original system completely intact after 8 years and 110k.

As has been said, you won't get queiter than a genuine manufacturers original.

The Dervboy