[Vwdiesel] Muffler or Streight pipe

[James Hansen]

> One time, doing some testing, I unbolted the exhaust at the downpipe on
> my '85 Jetta TD and drove around for a half-hour, down the highway,
> etc.  I can't really judge on the power as I was mainly focused on
> figuring out why the engine kept cutting out, but with absolutely no
> exhaust system bolted on, it was thoroughly tolerable.  So much so that
> I was kind of disappointed.

Very much so.  I've ran my pickup with the 1.9tdin it with just a fabbed
downpipe in place.  Pretty benign.  Just points to the exhaust tubing as a
source of resonance.  I had a straight pipe on my 1.6 Jetta, that was
perfectly fine from the front seats, and absolutely intolerable in the back
seat. I put a glasspack in the place of the stock muffler, the resonance
went away.  So... When I went with a big pipe in the 97 Passat tdi, I did
the flowmaster thing in the rear rather than risking the same type of
resonance in the rear seat or some other interesting science experiment.
Worked okay.
-james