Text & Photos by Matthew King
Do you really need an exhaust system on your car?
That's a good question.
If you have neighbors, drive it on public streets anywhere there are cops, or race it on virtually any NHRA track in the country, the answer is probably yes. Will it cost you power compared to open headers? Although that answer is also frequently yes, it can be no with the right system.
We've been running open headers on our '86 Mustang project car since day one because it was the easiest thing to do and it seemed cool.
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It was also brutally loud, but it did pass muster at our local track because Los Angeles County Raceway doesn't enforce a 95-decibel rule or require mufflers like many "street-legal" drag programs do. However, we always wondered if the open headers were costing us a little low-end torque due to a lack of backpressure. To find the answer, we took the car to MagnaFlow
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Performance Exhaust's research and development center. After discussing our combination and the way the car is used (100 percent at the track), MagnaFlow built a system based on its universal X-pipe crossover and a pair of its stainless steel street series mufflers.
For any performance exhaust system, some type of crossover connecting the two sides of a dual exhaust system is important because it acts to balance the two banks of the engine. The common H-style crossover is good at balancing sound pulses between the two halves, but does little to promote scavenging because the exhaust gasses tend to follow the path of least resistance, which is straight
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