Posted by Mike M on August 16, 2002 at 17:39:27:
It's been about a month without a muffler posting, so I thought I'd stir the pot again.
Earlier this summer I put on a turn out style pipe with a single baffle from JC Whitney (cheap). It was deep in tone but very loud with terrible backfiring. When I pulled up in my driveway, the 15 year old half deaf dog next door, from inside their house with the door closed went crazy when I turned it off and got a backfire as loud as any rifle shot I've ever heard. I ordered a Jireh silencer to try with it 10 weeks ago but it is out of stock and has not arrived (with no communication from Jireh, I might add).
Last week I picked up a used Jardine on Ebay. It has a good tone and is not nearly as loud as I expected from some of the posts - matter of opinion I guess. It backfires some, although it is almost tolerable. I advanced the idle speed and the backfire goes away. My question is - why does a faster idle help the backfire and does running the higher idle speed do any harm? I don't like the idle quite as fast as I've set it, but being a novice I'm hesitant to start doing carb mods.
By the way, with the JC Whitney pipe, my gas mileage went from about 48 to 54 mph. No data on the Jardine yet.