About Performance Mufflers

You may have heard performance mufflers mentioned regarding racecars, drag racing or off the road vehicles and motorcycles but do you know what they are and what they do? Performance mufflers most likely do much more than you realize. Most often the performance mufflers are installed on very high performance vehicles. 

• Mufflers are generally located about halfway from the exhaust manifold on the engine and the vehicles tailpipe. They are generally used to “muffle” the noise that is being generated by the combustion of the engine.


• The purpose of a “performance muffler” is to increase the engine’s performance and it accomplishes this by being less “restrictive” thus giving better performance to the engine’s output.


• The down side of the higher performance is that the muffler does less of one of its primary functions, which is muffling the noise. With all performance mufflers the noise level will automatically increase. Being less restrictive means more noise and resistance are going through the muffler and not being contained by it.


• Performance mufflers have been designed to take a number of different shapes and sizes of exhaust piping. All you need do is look at the vast array of  motorcycles for example to see those variations.


• The actual performance increase of the vehicle will not be large but in racing and power situations, an increase of three to eight horsepower can make a huge difference. It is fact that they do increase both, but not tremendously.

Given the better performance of these mufflers it is not hard to understand why you will see so many of them on vehicles that require that little “extra” in speed or power and a high performance muffler will provide just that.