177 replies to this topic

[eldougo]

The worst sound apart from those rotary motors ,is a V8 road car with a exhaust noise that is mated to a automatic .they sound Soooooooo bad if your going to have a street racer get a manual gearbox for f--k sake .

[MPea3]

How about one engine which can be both the best and the worst? The Ducati 90 degree 2 valve air cooled twin, with an open exhaust and it's chattering dry clutch, sounds almost like a thrashing machine in heat at idle. I've had more than one person tell me he thinks something's wrong with my bike. Get it into that sweet area between 5 and 9 thousand rpm however and it's sooooooo sweet!

[larryd]

Absolutely anything on the rev-limiter . . . . . . . .

[arttidesco]

I'd go with the DFL when it first came out and the early Walkinshaw & LM Mazda's and include anything with dodgy electrics for good measure.

[primer]

How about one engine which can be both the best and the worst? The Ducati 90 degree 2 valve air cooled twin, with an open exhaust and it's chattering dry clutch, sounds almost like a thrashing machine in heat at idle. I've had more than one person tell me he thinks something's wrong with my bike. Get it into that sweet area between 5 and 9 thousand rpm however and it's sooooooo sweet!

Oh yes, you described it perfectly. I think the 'dynamic range' of noise/music produced by this engine is quiet unmatched.

[Charles E Taylor]

Worst Sound?


It might be clever to say silence, but for me.....


A Paddock full of these, in the quite of the morning at a damp Eifelrennen, where they used to accompany the F2 races.


It was not the worst sound when they stopped!!!!




Charlie

[La Sarthe]

For all Mazda Le Mans fans, Johnny Herbert did a few laps before the main race in his 1991-winning car. He was trying reasonably hard and yet it sounded better than I remembered - certainly better than a Peugeot diesel

[kayemod]

A Paddock full of these, in the quite of the morning at a damp Eifelrennen, where they used to accompany the F2 races.

There's something even worse than that, a whole gaggle of these buzzy little things, struggling up The Mountain from Ramsey on the IOM TT course.

[Bjorn Kjer]

Diesel in motorsport !

[Michael Ferner]

Worst Sound?


It might be clever to say silence, but for me.....


A Paddock full of these, in the quite of the morning at a damp Eifelrennen, where they used to accompany the F2 races.


It was not the worst sound when they stopped!!!!




Charlie

Sacrilege! The sound of a Kreidler is heart warming to anyone having spent his adolescence in Germany...

[MPea3]

Sacrilege! The sound of a Kreidler is heart warming to anyone having spent his adolescence in Germany...

Do they sound anything like this? A whole herd of 39cc engines spinning up to about 14K...

[Michael Ferner]

Ahhh... Saturday night at the disco! John Travolta is dead, Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan are in office, the night is cool and so is the beer... real nostalgia!

[VAR1016]

Do they sound anything like this? A whole herd of 39cc engines spinning up to about 14K...

Ugh!
Quite quick though aren't they?

[LucaP]

those new GP3 engines sound like Peg-Leg Pete farting in a glass bottle

Edited by Luca Pacchiarini, 18 June 2011 - 19:24.

[Francois78]

About Mazda Wankel :

- the 2 rotors are generally awfull , the peak was the Mazda Group C junior entered at Le MAns 1983 , especially when you was on the wrong side of the track ...

Here is some 2 rotors leaving the pit road , play ot loud !!!



- the 3 rotors and 4 rotors are pleasant , I prefer the 3 rotors ( Mazda 757 lucky strike le Mans 1986 , Mazda RX7 IMSA GTO 1988 Kodak)


Yes , Diesel sound is awfull , you can hear the clik-clik-clik with onboard camera during Le Mans 24 hours .

[Brauch]

The Diesel powered cars that have raced at Le Mans the past few years. I'll take the raucous noise of a 2 rotor wankel over that sorry excuse of a motor any day. I literally hate those cars from Audi and Peugeot because of their silence. To think of the glorious sounding cars the French once built from Matra...and to compare it with the silent fart of the diesel..

[GMACKIE]

About Mazda Wankel

Here is some 2 rotors leaving the pit road , play ot loud !!!

NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!

[Lee Nicolle]

About Mazda Wankel :

- the 2 rotors are generally awfull , the peak was the Mazda Group C junior entered at Le MAns 1983 , especially when you was on the wrong side of the track ...

Here is some 2 rotors leaving the pit road , play ot loud !!!



- the 3 rotors and 4 rotors are pleasant , I prefer the 3 rotors ( Mazda 757 lucky strike le Mans 1986 , Mazda RX7 IMSA GTO 1988 Kodak)


Yes , Diesel sound is awfull , you can hear the clik-clik-clik with onboard camera during Le Mans 24 hours .

The 4 rotors actually sound a bit like a very strong 6.Two rotors should all be banned under health and safety rules, unless carying about 50 kilos of mufflers. And yes they can be that heavy to shut those things up!

[Lee Nicolle]

An aquaintace went to Lemans this year, he reckons the trucks on the highway sound better than the racing cars!! Diesels

[E1pix]

Haven't read much here.... but the '80s- and '90s-vintage Indy Lights Buicks were dauntingly grotesque in their exhaust note.

Next time I'll write what I really think.

[peter kropotk]

Haven't read much here.... but the '80s- and '90s-vintage Indy Lights Buicks were dauntingly grotesque in their exhaust note.

Next time I'll write what I really think.;)

As some of you know, I am a vintage UK stock car fan, so "Worst exhaust noise" and "Best exhaust noise" are the same thing for me. In the early 1960s, the most exhilerating / anticipatory exercise for me was winding down the car window as we headed down a country road approaching a 1/4 mile stadium; we wanted to catch the first sounds bouncing off the corrugated-iron grandstands and stadium walls. Those full-contact stock cars used Jag sixes, or ex-USAAF V-8's. Many were in poor states of tune, so given the tiny 150-yard straights they were either on full chat or excruciatingly on the overrun: blatt, fart, chuff, BANG, stutter, BANGBANG, whine --- then full chat again. To the accompaniment of squealing wornout road tires of course, and occasionally the gorgeous THUMP as someone lost it and sideswiped the massive H-beam steel girders and steel cables that formed the track fence.

No sound on earth was more joyous, while at the same time painful to an engineering sensibility. When USAAF bases in the UK began downsizing, servicemen were stuck with the big cars they'd brought in free of charge ["personal transportation"]. British customs law dictated that if a US car was left in England, its full customs duty would have to be paid, unless it was an unusable wreck. So --- countless wrecks occurred. One easy trick was to put a pickaxe through the water jacket. Most British stock car builders went to scrap yards for these nearly-new engines --- plenty of 383 and 409 motors ---, and just brazed a patch on the block, and bingo.

http://www.oldstox.com/images/King%206%20braf%2062.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c...ld_May_19th.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c...ton 42 best.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c...dougie pits.jpg
And this one has no hoses or radiator, and the steering linkage is amazing: http://www.oldstox.c...ges/cheveng.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c.....oden 1970.jpg

I can't resist ending with this: http://www.oldstox.c...es/dennis22.jpg
These photographs are almost 50 years old. The stadiums were packed, the men wore shirts and ties, women wore twin sets and hair-do's, grandparents and whipper-snappers were there, sandwiches and thermos flasks galore. Everybody was smiling or laughing or cheering, including the drivers and mechanics who would occasionally be fighting in the pits. How times have changed.

[Lee Nicolle]

The 409 powered car clearly is having some maintenance as the waterpump is off and the radiator is out. Nobody in their right mind would try and run an engine like that with no cooling.It would blow up in 2 laps. And a rare engine even then. And even rarer induction.
The steering is a work of art though.
Those heavy stock cars were as good as anything in the US or Oz in that period. From the pics I have seen they have not progressed much past that!

[WDH74]

The worst sound apart from those rotary motors ,is a V8 road car with a exhaust noise that is mated to a automatic .

I would say anything with a decent exhaust sound mated to an automatic, or at least one that shifts up early. That short shifting into top gear rather takes the fun out of it, I think.

A Paddock full of these, in the quite of the morning at a damp Eifelrennen, where they used to accompany the F2 races.

German nostalgia notwithstanding, but that really just makes me think of yardwork-my rototiller sounds exactly the same. And I like two strokes.

-WDH

[peter kropotk]

The 409 powered car clearly is having some maintenance as the waterpump is off and the radiator is out. Nobody in their right mind would try and run an engine like that with no cooling.It would blow up in 2 laps. And a rare engine even then. And even rarer induction.
The steering is a work of art though.
Those heavy stock cars were as good as anything in the US or Oz in that period. From the pics I have seen they have not progressed much past that!

Lee: They have progressed a bit since the 1960s -- but the full-contact spirit remains, and the armouring has tripled because of car speeds and the steel track fences.
http://www.oldstox.c.....pril 2008.jpg

Here's a comparison between a 1960's "Junior" league stock car [1172cc sidevalve] and today's equivalent:

http://www.oldstox.c...drews examp.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c...mages/pic 1.jpg

But as in most sports, when money and technology come in the door, a lot of the bare-knuckle fun, sledge-hammer repairs, sleeping under the truck, lending a rival your last wrench --- all that goes out the window.

[D-Type]

Do those wings do anything at the speeds they'll reach on a short oval?

I'm asking because yesterday on a trailer I saw a small hatchback (Ford Festa or similar) "hot rod" or "stock car" on a trailer. I'm not sure exactly which class it would run in , but it had no windscreen or other glass. It also sported a large wing at the rear, roughly on the line of the back axle. The question is how would that be any use on a front-drive car?

[peter kropotk]

Do those wings do anything at the speeds they'll reach on a short oval?

I'm asking because yesterday on a trailer I saw a small hatchback (Ford Festa or similar) "hot rod" or "stock car" on a trailer. I'm not sure exactly which class it would run in , but it had no windscreen or other glass. It also sported a large wing at the rear, roughly on the line of the back axle. The question is how would that be any use on a front-drive car?

The car you saw could not be "aided" by its wing.
On shale-grit tracks, the wing side-plates act as a rudder, at least on the lightweight F2 stock cars. The F1 monsters use even bigger "shale wings": http://photos.stoxne...7sh_osf_(2).jpg
On North American sprint cars, of course, the big airfoils and side plates produce incredible lap speeds.

A greater benefit is the advertising space.
In neither case does the fore-and-aft negative airfoil produce useful downforce, except possibly where it's not needed --- at the very of a straight.
This topic is constantly fought over in oval track circles; hey there's a pun in there I think.

[Lee Nicolle]

Lee: They have progressed a bit since the 1960s -- but the full-contact spirit remains, and the armouring has tripled because of car speeds and the steel track fences.
http://www.oldstox.c.....pril 2008.jpg

Here's a comparison between a 1960's "Junior" league stock car [1172cc sidevalve] and today's equivalent:

http://www.oldstox.c...drews examp.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c...mages/pic 1.jpg

But as in most sports, when money and technology come in the door, a lot of the bare-knuckle fun, sledge-hammer repairs, sleeping under the truck, lending a rival your last wrench --- all that goes out the window.

Yes I have seen that pic of the #515 car before. it looks like a overweight stock rod from the early 70s. The then Supermodifieds [forerunner to the modern Sprintcars] were a good bit more racy.
As for the wings they give plenty of down force, and heaps of drag too! And they make a good cushion when they get upside down. A 470 yard gently banked track is done in under 12 seconds and a high banked 440 yard track they are running very low 10 sec laps. Spectacular but far too may crashes, and then they have to push them all again to start them. Grrr. [A sprintcar has no gearbox or clutch, just an in/ out mechanism on the drop gears in the quick change diff

[peter kropotk]

Yes I have seen that pic of the #515 car before. it looks like a overweight stock rod from the early 70s. The then Supermodifieds [forerunner to the modern Sprintcars] were a good bit more racy.
As for the wings they give plenty of down force, and heaps of drag too! And they make a good cushion when they get upside down. A 470 yard gently banked track is done in under 12 seconds and a high banked 440 yard track they are running very low 10 sec laps. Spectacular but far too may crashes, and then they have to push them all again to start them. Grrr. [A sprintcar has no gearbox or clutch, just an in/ out mechanism on the drop gears in the quick change diff

Lee, on Sprint cars I have often peered at the cable that pulls a quick-change gear "out", but never quite understood how the mechanism works. Does it pull the top cog or the bottom cog out of contact? And how does it do so when the damn axle is turning?!
At my local sprint track, 3/10 mile clay, the lap record is about 10.7 secs, just a fraction under 100mph average, which is stunning.

To get back to the thread topic, NOISE, here are a couple of older British stock cars with my favourite kind of stack exhaust, no longer permitted, alas:

http://www.oldstox.c...ellis where.jpg
http://www.oldstox.c...s/lauriebig.jpg