Great post Cabbage.. I was going to post the samething today.. A friend of mine has the electric cutout on his RT Charger and it sounds bad..(In a good way) My question to is the loss of the HP...

 

A well-designed exhaust system contributes a small amount to a streetable car's power by accelerating the flow of exhaust from the cylinder head to the tailpipe. A small amount of backpressure is necessary. A full on racing engine is so efficient at moving air that it doesn't need the backpressure- hence the lack of exahust. Cutouts (or dumps as they're also called) will remove most of the backpressure from your system by dumpin the exaust right after the header. Unfortunately, that will slow the exhaust flow, which means less efficient combustion and ultimately less power. Sounds better, runs slower. Incidentally, I had a muffler shop remove the stock mufflers from my 97 Lincoln Mark VIII (4.6 DOHC car) and replace them with glasspacks. Car sounded better, ran slower. Such is life.

 

Thanks for the info......cat-backs it is.

 

Well, I wont sacrifice sound for HP, so I won't being getting cut outs

 

Yup,,, Im doing a Corsa system.

 

We have installed cutouts on our 11.08 300SRT with the 426. On the dyno we tested back to back with cutouts open vs closed and running through the Corsa system. It showed ZERO Gain OR Loss. After 4 back to back runs, one open, one closed, one open , one closed. All basicly the same. So I would buy a catback for sure!!!!! then maybe add the cutouts for that extra sound. We open them at the strip and when crusing etc. Sounds awesome.


We installed the low profile electric cutouts alittle further down the system, close to where the xpipe would be-- just a side note. I would not run the Y type cutouts that mount closer to the headers.
Tim C

 

I have been wavering back and forth on cat-back exhaust and electric cutouts. I had read somewhere that you can expect to lose horsepower by installing the cutouts.....the trade off is that they sound a heck of a lot meaner than any cat-back system I have heard. Does anyone have anyone experience with this dilemma?

i have corsa cat back and performance ready remote dual cutouts the cutouts increased hp and the sound is increadible when opened

 

I have a magnaflow on my vette and challenger and gxp all have cut outs. Cut outs open the gxp runs at least .2 tenths faster on drag strip! I open them when I want to play I open them! I can tell alot better response with them open IMO! I love electric cut outs!!!!!

 

The corsa is a very free flowing exhaust so to me it makes sense that there would be little change with the cutouts. I personally don't by the 'back pressure' argument and yes I know the SRT engineers said it. It's not back pressure you want it's scavenging effect. Back pressure causes revision. The proper pipe size will promote better scavenging through exhaust gas speed. To large of a system, the speed goes down reducing low end toque.

If you put the cutouts up closer to the motor you could maybe have the effect of changing the effective header length and so shift the HP higher in the RPM range. The further down the exhaust the less the effect. Also I would suspect better gains for the SRT's than the R/T's due to port size. Exhaust technology has come a long way from what was there in 1970. Back then back pressure was more of an issue, so they helped more.

can't beat the sound... IMHO.

 

All I know is I lost a noticeable amount of low end power by just removing my resonators. I can't imagine how much I would loose with cutouts. It wasn't just me but everyone who drove my car said they thought it had a lot less zip.

 

These same questions went around on the charger forums. I had an 06 Charger with Zoomers and DMH Cutouts. There is a loss of power on the bottom end when the cutouts are 100% open; however, there is a gain when the cutouts were partially open. The HEMIs like a bit of back pressure, as do most performance V8 engines (from what I have read and understand). Get a good sounding exhaust for everyday use and put on some cutouts for those times when you want to sound real mean. The sound that comes out of the cutouts can not be compared to any exhaust system on the market...my .02

On a side note, if you run pipes from your cutouts to the back or side of the car, you can hook up a mean flame thrower kit