Hey Mike

First i would like to say that im very pleased with superchip so far. Ive only put about 100 miles on it so far and it feels like the truck is gaining more power the more miles i put on it.
Now for the question, I have a 40 series flowmaster on my truck, single 3" in duel 2.50 out and i also replaced the factory Y pipe, with these changes i had a noticable gain in power. My friend Bim Scott has a magnaflow on his truck and says it`s a better muffler and has better flow and will make more power. With your tuning experience over the years i thought you might be able to give me the facts as to wich one is better.

Thanks.

Larry.

 

Hi Speeder,

You've only driven in 100 miles so far? I would have thought you'd be out burning up the miles!

Well, Bim has a point; as you know, he has a small fortune tied up in that truck of his, and we've done the tuning on his vehicle, with more to come soon, there are more modifications being done that we have to tune for. You know how well that heavy 4.6 of his is running with everything he's done, and Magnaflow is a part of that.

Sure, I'm happy to go over this with you; with the Flowmaster, you'll gain horsepower, no doubt about it. However, you also lost torque up thru at least 3000 rpm, and usually all thru the low end and up into the mid-range, especially on part-throttle, with just about any series muffler they make. Flowmaster certainly lives up to their name in terms of opening up the flow, and we saw horsepower gains, absolutely! But what happens to torque is a completely different matter, and it's not just Flowmaster by the way, I don't mean to focus on them at all, they're a good company. We found only 3 of the cat-back systems that we dealt with did not cause a loss in torque, and they were, the Magnaflow, the Gibson Swept-Side model specifically, and then the Borla system.

The Magnaflow was the *only* one to actually increase torque in those areas, and it also got the highest raw horsepower gain to boot, making a strong showing in flow engineering.

The Magnaflow also has a very nice tone, it has an authoritative V-8 tone, but it's never "loud", and never drones in the cabin. I don't think anyone will find it objectionable, except someone who doesn't ever want to hear their engine at all.

Jardine has been one of my favorites, as they have traditionally been good at flow engineering however, these days, while they're still making nice horsepower gains, they're a bit loud, somtimes causing a drone in the cabin, especially on Expeditions for some reason.

Magnaflow just recently stopped making any aluminized systems, and have gone all-stainless. Previously, in their systems you got a stainless steel muffler, but the rest was aluminized, to keep the price down. Now it's all stainless, so it's gone up a bit, but it's well worth it if you want the best result you can get. In these heavy trucks, they absolutely need every ounce of torque they can get, they need different flow engineering than say, a Mustang or a Camaro.

It's very hard to find the exhaust system that actually functions the best for these heavy vehicles, and also sounds the best, as tone is so very subjective, & therefore elusive. To me, I think the Magnaflow has the best combination of sound, & certainly the best power results, both raw and overall, for these F-trucks & Expeditions. I'm running it on my truck, I wouldn't run anything else given what we've seen from the various cat-back systems out there for these vehicles.

Most of the cat-backs gave 12-14 hp peak gains on 5.4 F-150's & Expeditions, most of them were fairly equal within a relatively narrow range. The Magnaflow produced 17 hp on the 5.4 by comparison, and in the October issue of Truckin' magazine, they got 15.8 hp from the Magnaflow system on a 5.4 F-150 Super Crew.

So all in all, in terms of raw horsepower gains, all of the name cat-back systems we dealt with gave decent horsepower gains, and the vast majority of them also lost torque in the low to mid rpm ranges, that was common with most of them.

You have gained power with your Flowmaster setup, no doubt about that Speeder, so if you like the tone, you can certainly stick with it. If you decide you want to change, you could try using the Magnaflow muffler with the rest of that Flowmaster setup you have, I don't know exactly what those results would be. I would at least keep that Flowmaster Y-pipe, should you decide to replace your Flowmaster cat-back with the Magnaflow cat-back, that setup would give you the best results.

Good luck!

 

Read your post on different cat-back/muffler installs with interest.

I've been considering the Bassani x-cat-back system for my modded 01 L. I'm on a quest to reach the 12s in the 1/4(need quicker 60' times--ran a 1.982 Fri nite-have seen a 1.94 earlier). Would appreciate any comments/feedback you will make.

Btw, the F/M Delta 50 on my 97 f150 xlt 4.6L caused a loss of low end torque just as you indicated--your Superchip helps though.

Thanks in advance,

Dan

 

Hi Dan,

The Bassani setup for the Lightning is nice, though it's a bit loud for my tastes. What we've seen in the case of the Bassani setup that includes the headers, cats & exhaust, most of the power gain came from the headers, nor from the rest of the exhaust. There was a total power gain of 25 horsepower, and 20+ of that came from the headers.

The Lightning's dual 3" exhaust from the factory is pretty good, except for the muffler, it's a bit nasty and not as efficient as something like the Magnaflow, etc.

There isn't a significant amount of power to be gained from the cat-back area of the exhaust on the Lightning, at least, not until you're at about 450 hp or so. We just did the Magnaflow on our 2001 Lightning, and after driving both the Magnaflow-equipped and a number of Bassani-equipped Lightnings, I prefer the Magnaflow, just from the sound level. The Bassani sounds great, don't get me wrong, it's got a terrific bellow to it, a sound that is very pronounced, it's just too loud for me personally. I can't tell you the exact difference between the Bassani & the Magnaflow for the Lightning in terms of the effect on torque, we've not done that direct comparison.

In the case of the Lightning and it's Eaton blower, I wouldn't be concerned with low-end torque, not even for the short times, as that isn't the problem if teh truck is running right. Traction is the problem once you've got a good program and an intake kit on the Lightning; with good traction you can rip off 1.8 short times & 13.0-12.90 or so in the 1/4 mile.

I see you felt the loss in torque from Flowmaster as well, that's always going to happen in these F-150's with not only Flowmaster, but with most of the cat-back systems out there for the F-150, as we discussed above. Flowmaster does give solid horsepower gains, it's the torque at issue, so for the F-150, we feel the Magnaflow is the way to go.

Feel free to give us a call if you want to go over anything on your Lightning, & good luck!

 

I too have the Flowmaster 40 and when I installed I noticed alot of low end losses and I even posted a topic on this board about it. My question is can I just have the Magnaflow installed and keep my other parts in place. I have single in and dual out the back. Thanks

 

Hi Mikey88,

Sure, you can always just do a muffler swap if you like, all you need is the right Magnaflow muffler & have a good muffler shop do the work for you to run the existing pipes in & back out as you want them. They might need to adjust pipe length a little bit, but that's very easily done and doesn't cost much at all.

Now, what we don't know is, will just replacing the Flowmaster muffler with the Magnaflow muffler reverse that torque loss *completely*? We've never had that exact scenario run on a good dyno to tell us that exact result where the muffler is changed from Flowmaster to Magnaflow like that. What we know is that it couldn't possibly be any worse, you sure won't lose any more torque, but we can't say for sure if it will completely reverse all of the torque loss. My hunch is that it would have to be at least some noticeable improvement.

If you do decide to do this, just as a suggestion, have everything clamped on both ends of the new muffler instead of welding those connections, so that the muffler can easily be changed with no pipe cutting, etc. in the future That's how we did my truck's Magnaflow setup, and now we could change a muffler in literally 5 minutes.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for the info. I found a local shop in BAton Rouge to do it. Which muffler is best for my setup on my 99 F-150??? I want to get it done today or tommorrow. Thanks guys!!!

 

Forgot the profile

 

HI Mikey88,

Well, that's not easy to answer without taking a look to see exactly what's there. Me personally, I'm using the 30" long 5X11 unit, which is a 2.75" dual in dual out, and that is mated to dual 3" pipes that reduce down to go into the 2.75 in the muffler, and then back out it steps back up from the 2.75" at the exit point from the muffler to 3" pipe diamter from there on back. Of course, that's in the Lightning.

Now in your case, you're replacing that Flowmaster muffler, so it depends on what the length of that Flowmaster is, and you need to use **at least** an 18-inch long muffler to avoid "droning", and 30" would be even better, but of course you'll need to do some adjusments to pipe length with that 30" unit, as that is most likely going to be longer that any Flowmaster you may have under there now. Many times people prefer to just use the same length muffler to replace, making it an easier & cheaper proposition. My main concern here in "droning", we don't want it to "drone" in the cabin at cruising speeds in Overdrive between 1600-2200 rpm. The longer the muffler, the less tendency to drone, speaking in general terms. Most of the 18" units won't drone, anything shorter most likely will.

The best answer I could give you would be to get the advice of your local muffler shop, whoever is going to do the work, and have them help you decide on muffler length & dimensions. If you need a source for the Magnaflow, or if you want to go over what Magnaflow has availabe after you know the length of your current Flowmaster muffler, let us know via email or phone as we're dealers for all the Magnaflow stuff as well. If your local shop can give you good pricing on Magnaflow, that's fine too of course, do whatever you feel is best.

Good Luck!

 

Thanks Mike, the flowmaster I have is only about 12" long, and I would like one at least 18". I'll call you Monday about purchasing one from you. There is alot of room left to make the correct adjustment for a longer muffler under the truck, so I think it will be an easy job for a muffler shop.

 

Hi Mikey88,

Ahh, so your current unit is just 12 inches. (Wait, that sounded a bit lewd, didn't it? ) So an 18" muffler would be a noticeable improvement in terms of droning & volume, as well as torque, and yes, it should be very easy for any muffler shop to integrate with your current pipes.