Exhaust and 4.10 gears question

[hades_1]

I have a 96Cobra with Ford racing shorty headers, stock H pipe and magnapack mufflers. The exhaust sounds awesome around 1900-2300 RPMs, above that it doesn't sound very loud. I used to have 3.55 gears and I would be at around ~2200 RPMs at highway speeds and my car sounded awesome (not loud enough for my taste, but still pretty great!). Now with 4.10 gears, at highway speed I am around ~2600-2800 RPMs and the exhaust is now very quiet.

So I am thinking of changing the mid pipe IF it would make it sound better at this higher RPMs. I am not looking for an O/R and/or long tube headers though.
Any idea if changing to an high-flow X or H pipe would make the exhaust sound better at slightly higher RPMs or is that never going to happen with these mufflers?

 

[Sn8kebitten]

I don't think you'll ever get any louder with a different midpipe while still having cats. A friend of mine has only 2 high flow cats in a bassani x pipe and stock mufflers on his 1998 Cobra and it's just as quiet as my Cobra was when I had stock exhaust with Flowmaster mufflers.

 

[hades_1]

X-pipe is overall more quiet than H-pipe though, right?
Sadly it doesn't look like we have much choice in terms of catted H-pipe for the 96-98 cobra ;/
I wonder if the JBA catted H-pipe would be better? 2 high flow cats has to be louder than 6 stock cats...

 

[CobraHuck]

Unfortunately, if it's a catted mid pipe, it's gonna be quiet. Doesn't really matter much going from the stocker down to 2 high flows, it's still gonna be quiet unless you've got a really powerful, built motor. Is there a reason you want to stay catted? If it's for inspection/emissions, you could just swap your stock midpipe back on once a year for that...

Supposedly Xs are "quieter", but not really. They're a tad quieter at cruise and part throttle, but up high in the revs they're louder and higher pitched. An H will make the exhaust sound much deeper and "muscle car"ish at lower speeds/rpms, the H will also likely cause more drone in the cabin as well.

It all comes down to what you like best, "muscle car, deep and rumbly" or "exotic, high pitched scream". The 4.6s scream like no other, I vote ORX.

 

[jmsa540]

drop the cats, and get an offroad h-pipe.

 

[Chris.94GT]

It is just cabin gain that makes it sound louder in that range. The body/interior resonates at the same frequency. I f'ing hated that resonance/drone on my car.

 

[hades_1]

It is just cabin gain that makes it sound louder in that range. The body/interior resonates at the same frequency. I f'ing hated that resonance/drone on my car.

Ah, sweet, I was wondering about that. Well, I guess I do like that drone heh.

As for why I don't want O/R pipe = where I live the cops are bored and won't hesitate to pull you over for any reason, also they sometimes have mobile smog station that randomly take cars to test and if you are caught without cats, it's big $$$ (also, I live a block away from a police station).
Besides, the gains from an O/R compared to high flow cats from a good brand are negligible and the pollution is bad enough in California as it is.

 

[CobraHuck]

^That SUCKS!!! Glad I don't live in Nazi-Cali. Here in Ga, we only get smogged once a year and they don't even look underneath. My car's low enough that it'd be really hard for them to see anyway, but even when I had my lifted truck with headers/ORY they never bothered