In a message dated 5/30/2006 9:42:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
charlescox@coastalbay.com writes:
I can still remember back when running my RX-4 road-racing with a megaphone
out the back...was the loudest most obnoxious noise you could imagine. They
instituted the mufflers for rotaries the following year...made the cars
quieter but the rule was intended to make them slower...didn't work.
Chas
I disagree on the purpose being to slow them down. I went through SCCA
drivers school at Sears Point. Izzy Sanchez in an RX-2 was gridded to my
immediate left for the "practice races". This was well before the Mazda Muffler
was
required. The RX-2 had a straight pipe exhaust coming out under the passenger
side door. As we came around turn 11 and brought the power up - The noise
coming into my left ear from about 6 feet away was not just defining, but
painful, ear plugs or not. I backed off the throttle and dropped back 25 feet
to
regain any composure I might have had. I remember sitting in the pits. You
could hear every shift from the rotaries rounding turn seven at the back of
the
course. Something had to be done about the cacophony coming out of those cars.
It was and, indeed, didn't seem to slow them down at all. - Seth Emerson
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