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It's actually the rich condition caused when you let off the throttle that causes the popping.
And as far as this exhaust shaZam goes, I have a straight piped sport bike and a truck with true duals, no cats, and just a muffler per pipe. Bike is tuned to run an open exhaust, final performance test on that will be on Thursday night. Truck runs beautifully, and sounds good too. Both can be loud as hell, and I prefer it that way. Driving something you can't hear the exhaust in is like listening to music with clogged ears.
It's not just dumb rednecks, harley riders, ricers, bro's, insert stereotype here, that open up exhausts or have cars that don't pass emissions. So let's pull the name calling out of here, fair enough?
I agree with the statement about wanting to hear what you are driving, but open headers on a street car, give me a break. And, yes, the popping is caused by unburt fuel igniting outside the combustion chamber. However, it takes fuel and oxygen to ignite, and given that exhaust gas has roughly <1% oxygen in it, its getting oxygen from somewhere.... Its hard on valves from what I've seen, plus its a waste of good fuel, which on a race car is $12+ a gallon. Also depending on the overlap in your cam it can lead or fresh air entering the combustion chamber and causing a misfire with stock manifolds or shorty style headers...
Again, I was not talking about a car, or bike, setup to run open headers with hardened valves and such, we are talking about taking whatever street car and tossing a set of SHORTY STYLE HEADERS on it and saying oh yea that sounds good and makes more power now, because it doesnt and its not good for the engine. Especially if we are talking anything from the fuel injected / computer controlled carb era. There is an O2 sensor that that should not be getting fresh air on it. Hence running extensions on long tube headers on modern day muscle cars that run closed loop...
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