CORVETTE EXHAUST Review (Magnaflow Mufflers on a C4) Before_After Comparison

I wasted hundreds of dollars in a failed attempt to improve the sound quality of my Corvette with these magna flow mufflers .

So you don't have to in this video , I'll show you stock versus aftermarket sound comparisons as well as giving you my thoughts on these mufflers which were very mixed .

And even if you don't have a Corvette or you're looking at other exhaust mods for your car , I'll be going over some basics that anyone should be aware of before they start hacking away at their stock system .

Stay tuned .

Welcome to the channel for anyone who wants to enjoy cars without breaking the bank .

Last year .

I was lucky enough to acquire this bone stock 32,000 mile , 1996 Corvette collector edition .

It's a dream car that I saved up a long time to purchase .

And overall , I love the car , but I found the stock ex sauced , surprisingly weak sauce .

If you want to hear for yourself , skip ahead to the time code on the screen .

If you just want to hear some comparisons of my stock ex sauce versus the magna flows after they were installed .

Otherwise , here's why I picked what I did and a little bit more info about the Magna flows and some other options here were my four requirements for shopping around .

First off , I didn't want to touch the cale converters .

Now , these are near the front of the car and are mostly for emissions purposes .

I live in California where there's strict smock testing .

So I didn't want to mess with these .

Second .

I wanted a system that kept the square exhaust tips like these that all Corvettes had from the factory between 1992 and 1996 .

You'll know by the way that my exhaust has these little chrome extensions .

Now , these are aftermarket add ons that were installed by the previous owner .

There's a few holes drilled into the ends of the stock exhaust and these just kind of screw right in .

Uh I thought they were a nice bit of decoration so I made sure to keep them throughout this entire process .

Third , I wanted to keep my exhaust budget under $500 .

This immediately cried any full cap back systems off of my list as they were just quite a bit more capac systems , replace everything from the converts back cap back .

So the resonators , the mufflers and all the piping in between a lot more hardware than just the mufflers .

So a lot pricier fourth , I wanted a boost in sound quality and a little more volume , but I wanted as little drone as possible .

And if you're not familiar with what I mean by drone .

Drone is also known as resonance .

It's not just a loud noise , it's also a horrendous booming frequency that pummels the entire cabin of the car and can even cause headaches over long drives .

Drone usually occurs at lower cruising reds and especially on the highway , it's difficult to capture on camera .

But here's a few examples of drone that I was able to get with the Magna flow mufflers installed .

Understand that unlike most Corvettes mine isn't a weakened toy or something .

I keep in storage .

It's my only car .

It's my daily driver .

So any drone or resonance would be super not cool .

One cost effective option that I found was a kit that would replace the mufflers with a straight pipe .

Now , this option sounded really awesome .

Here's a clip I found but reading reviews online and in my Corvette Facebook groups , I found too many people complaining about the loud droning issues with the mufflers completely deleted .

So I continued my search .

Eventually , I found these Magdala mufflers with the square L T one tips that seemed to fit the bill .

These were much more freer flowing than the stock mufflers which are baffled to muffle the sound as much as possible .

Here's an animation from American Muscle that does a great job of showing how the stock baffled mufflers work compared to the free flowing absorb design of these Magna flows which restrict the exhaust .

A lot less .

I found these magna flows for a pretty good price on Corvette Central , an online Corvettes part store .

They also had the only official videos I could find anywhere that included this 12th sound clip which I'll play in full here .

So you don't have to hunt for it .

Sounded awesome .

Right .

Corvette Central also had this hosted video explaining that this particular muffler was engineered with drones specifically in mind .

Yeah .

so this convinced me to go ahead and order the Magna flows .

The mufflers also came with these steel clamps .

Now , the idea with these is after you make a cut in the exhaust pipe behind the muffler , the ends of the muffler are designed to slip right over and clamp in place .

Here's a video of a backer mechanic doing this cutting procedure that I found during my search .

The thing is exhaust specialists recommend skipping the clamps all together and welding the pipes on .

Instead that way you never have to worry about any exhaust s leaks or the clamps eventually rusting away .

So you would cut this end sleeve off the Magna flows and weld it there .

I decided not to use the clamps and pay for an exhaust shop to go with the welding option would cost between 100 bucks and 200 bucks .

So I went with Morse Muffler in Burbank , California because they had extensive experience with Corvettes and could get it done in just a few hours .

The operation went quickly and smoothly .

They cut out the old exhaust and welded in the shiny new Magna flows and seemed to be a good job .

The sound difference with the magna flows was immediately noticeable .

361.45 --> 454.76

Now , under performance conditions , I definitely preferred the sound of the Magna flows which certainly were louder and more aggressive .

I love the sound of the exhaust burbling on the overrun .

Like when you're on the gas and then let off , you can hear the un burned exhaust popping out the back .

Take a listen .

That overrun verbal is something this stock ex sauce wouldn't do at all .

So why was this a fail ?

Because despite what I was hearing everywhere online , the bag of flows groaned .

But why was this supposedly mild exhaust causing all this drone ?

Turns out it's because the very architecture of the Corvette makes it very susceptible to droning .

It's like one big resonance chamber .

Like not only are the mufflers just a few feet away from your head , but there's mostly air between them and your ears and worse than that .

The Angula hatchback glass actually amplifies this booming effect .

And I think all this explains why the stock exhaust system is so muted in the first place .

Chevy engineers took that trade off to eliminate any drone .

You might be wondering why did I hear more complaints about this online .

A few theories .

I have the obvious one being I have a manual transmission car .

Whereas three out of four C four Corvettes are automatics and those extra speeds in the manual were geared more for cruising .

So it's possible the automatics don't loaf around in that dring rev range as much as you typically would with the stick .

But I think the real reason I didn't hear about this Droning issue is most people use their Corvettes as occasional weekend toys , not daily drivers .

And if all you're doing is taking your Corvette out on weekends and hooting it around and you get all the great performance sounds with very little drone and you know , ripping through the canyons .

I did love the sound of this exhaust , but it's a completely different story during a typical daily commute where you spend most of your time just cruising along in traffic .

Droning residence is just not what you want to hear after a long day at the office .

And by the way , just to see if I could drown out the noise , I even did a cheap little experiment with a mountain of old clothes and rags .

I just happen to have stuffed into the hatch thinking maybe I could just buy a sound mat or something later to smother the sound .

But because Droning is more of a resonance vibration issue than just a sound issue , this had zero real effect .

So after a few months of droning around with the manga flows , I threw in the towel .

Thankfully , I had kept my stock mufflers .

So I took them back to more sm muffler paid them again .

Got the magna flows yanked out and the stockers welded back in several 100 wasted dollars later .

I'm back to where I started .

But I did learn a few things .

Number one , if you have a car with a design like a corvette that's susceptible to drone , be cautious , the manufacturer probably had a good reason to make the stock exhaust so quiet in the first place .

Number two , it might be worth looking into a full exhaust kit instead of just the mufflers like I did with the money , I wasted buying just the mufflers and removing them and then putting them back .

I could have just bought a full cat back exhaust system in the first place .

These setups give the exhaust designers a lot more control over things like sound and resonance .

I've also heard from other corvette enthusiasts that the full corsa system has little to no drone .

And while I haven't personally been in one , I did own a Corsa system on my Monte Carlo S S Intimidator and it didn't drone at all .

So if you want to perform it , sound to your corvette and you're worried about drone .

Best bet is just pony up for one of these full systems .

But hey , leave a comment .

If you had a similar experience or a completely different one .

And if you found this video helpful , go ahead and subscribe .

There's a lot more car content , mostly much more general than this coming your way from this channel .

Yes , I got it .

See if I can sell these on Craigslist or something .