Muffler fell off

So, how long can you drive on a car before you need to put the muffler back on?

Obvoiusly, as soon as possible, but I don't think a few days would hurt it.

Jack

Reply to
jack mcc
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That depends on how soon you meet a police officer.

It won't hurt the car, but it might result in a visit to see a judge, which could be more expensive.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Reply to
Mike Walsh

Thanks, everyone.

Mainly, I just wanted to make sure I could make it through the weekend. I hope they can attach the tailpipe I already have.

I live in a county tha tdoesn't have emissions testing, but I do want to get it fixed asap.

Is the Police issuejust a noise thing?

Reply to
jack mcc

Police don't seem to enforce the noise ordinances on cars like they used to. Perhaps it's because so many of the newer cars have loud systems. And with cat converters the noise is muffled a bit anyway by the time it gets to the muffler. If your muffler fell off, the chances of attaching a new one to the old pipe are slim and none. Chances are you need the whole system from the cat back. And it probably is in your best interest to replace the system rather than come back a few months later and try to piece something to the muffler you need now.

Reply to
Al Bundy

Reply to
Mike Walsh

Not from the factory, they don't! Most all newer cars have very quiet systems from the factory. Certainly there are VERY few new cars (I can think of exactly one, the Dodge SRT4 don't-call-it-a-Neon) that have factory exhaust systems even beginning to approach the noise levels routinely emitted by brand-new muscle cars in the late '60s and early '70s.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Yes, I must say I'm quite impressed at how little noise even a performance-oriented late-model car can be these days. They seem to think through those issues a lot more carefully than in days of yore. When you encounter a loud newish car, chances are the owner put in an aftermarket muffler (or even most of a new exhaust system, usually focusing on the less regulated part from the cat back) to let more noise out, either in the hope of getting more performance or as a matter of taste.

Some cars are just quieter and/or less dependent on the muffler for noise suppression, too. Of the three late-80s, early-90s four-cylinder Toyotas in the family, all had near-complete muffler failures of a very typical nature for that make and era -- the flimsy endplates rust out around the inlet and outlet pipes. This leaves the muffler hanging from the car body (to which it is securely and redundantly attached, as well it shoud be) as the exhaust flows around it... without making what you would call obnoxious amounts of noise.

Note that the mufflers on all of these are at the far downstream end. Some combination of the muffling effect of the catalytic converter (which is rather far forward), the long undercar pipes, and the small engine just make it a relatively quiet car, even when the muffler is doing little or no objective good.

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

Until the dumb kidzzz get their ignorant hands on them, and install all kinds of noisy garbage in the mistaken belief it makes their car quicker, faster, and more attractive to, like, chicks 'n' stuff.

They have to, in order to comply with Federal noise standards!

It would be less pestillent if that were the case everywhere. Hereabouts (Toronto), the kidzzz tend to gut or remove the catalytic converter, in the misguided quest for a nonexistent power gain by doing so. Their cars become gross polluters, and Ontario's Drive-Clean emission testing program is sufficiently ill-conceived not to catch them.

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Reminds me of my parents '67 Fairlane. I managed to rip off the exhaust system from the muffler inlet on back driving down a path to the river. I wanted to go out that night, so I fished around our farm junk pile and found an old MF-175 Tractor muffler that had ben damaged by driving under a low tree limb (it was a vertical exhaust). I cut off the damaged end of the muffler's inlet pipe and jammed the muffler on the Fairlane's exhaust pipe. It sounded great. I doubt it did much for the performance, but at idle the car sounded like it something special under the hood (which it did not).

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

...and then you sold the '67 to Cory Dunkle? ;-)

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

BOLSCOM!

Reply to
aarcuda69062

"Daniel J. Stern" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@alumni.engin.umich.edu...

Nawh, my sister eventually totaled the car. This was probably the worst Ford my parents owned. It was bought used as a second car for the "kids" to drive to school. After my Father bought it, I figured out it had been wrecked, and was suffering from major rust as well. It was clearly a "northern car" that had been sent south to die. To make matters worse I drove the car into a pond which lead to a problem with a transmission. Despite all this, it got me and my Sisters thought high school (and beyond). I still remember sneaking off to the beach in the car. We spent all our money at a dance club. When we got ready to leave, I managed to get the car stuck in the sand. In the process of digging it out, we managed to punch a hole in one of the tires. It was about 70 miles back home, and the gas gauge was on empty. After looking all over the car and in our collective pockets, we managed to find $0.35 to buy gas (which was about a gallon back then). I managed to make it home. However, when my Sister started to town in the car the next morning she ran out of gas about 1 mile from our home. Or then there was the time we were trying a logging path and I managed to drive the car into a hole so big, the roof was level with the normal road surface. We eventually got it out of the hole, but not before my buddy opened the back door just as I shifted into reverse in an effort to rock the car out of the hole. This resulted in a large quantity of mud being sprayed across the interior of the car. This required a lot of early morning car cleaning...... Hmmm...maybe it was not such a bad car after all. The more I think about my driving escapades when I was 16 to 18, the less I want my son to get a driver's license.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

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