My muffler looks to be original (its a beast of a muffler) as I put her into the barn for her winter nap yesterday I noticed the pipe was hangin low. After a quick in inspection the strap rusted through and I found a golf ball sized hole in the muffler :( . After doing my search and reading some of the numerous posts already on replacing the muffler with the Aero resonator I found that most were for newer models or for the Cummins engines. My old girl has the CAT 3208T in it. Anyone out there have any input on pros or cons of this replacement on that engine?
I'll be reading up on all my options as I don't plan on working on it until around Thanksgiving. Thanks in advance everyone!!
Jeff
Not sure it makes any difference what engine you have when it comes to replacing the stock restricting muffler with a resonator as long as you use the one that is matched to your engine. They all breathe better with the stock muffler remved.
Roland
Ditto.
Take it all off and design your own set up with flex stainless, some of old pipes and resonator. I did not use Aero but standard Walker unit and it works great. Do not think the exhaust emissions care whether it is a stainless unit or plain steel as they both do the same thing.
JohnH
I replaced the muffler on my Cummins engine with an Aero muffler. I believe that Aero makes both a muffler and a resonator, but about the only difference is that the muffler is longer. I could look through the one I installed. Slightly more noise at idle, but can't tell any noise difference at cruise speed. The turbocharger does most of the muffling. I did not notice any change in power or mileage after the change, but there may be a slight improvement that is too small to detect without a dyno test. The shiny stainless will discolor as soon as it gets hot. Less weight, but I had to rework the brackets and piping.
Thank you guys for your input....I didn't think it would matter what engine either I just didn't see any post from a CAT owner. I appreciate it!!!
We are believers in only choosing the Aero resonator. Price is usually under $100 and its engineering design is something we like.
We have a 4" turbo output pipe, but stepped up to 5" Aero, and ended up stepping down to 4" for chrome tip.
Aero 5" comes in two sizes, that both operate the same, but one may be better for a specific insulation space. AT5050 is shorter and wider and the AT5050X: is longer and thinner. Both are resonators. We found that for the shorter was much better to work with and we had lots of space width wise, so a littler larger diameter made no difference.
For 10 years we towed a 2002 4,300 lb Jeep Grand and when we got our new 2012 5,400 lb Jeep Grand, we noticed some power loss from additional weight when driving. But we love our Jeep, so we did not care about the increased weight, which did not cause any overheating etc. Then after we put on the Aero resonator, we noticed we were again towing like the older Jeep, so we feel the change from muffler to resonator noticeably improved our power.
Here is our installation story:
Exhaust System Replacement - 1997 U270 (http://www.beamalarm.com/Documents/exhaust_system_replacement-1997_u270.html)
Do it yourself or find a small muffler shop that can weld and you will find the cost to install is not very much. And well worth it.
Barry,
After reading your complete write up I was leaning toward the shorter one. Just wasn't convinced do to my older engine. I'm convinced now!!! ^.^d
In our setup, turbo exit faces toward front of motorhome. We made a 180 to get exhaust facing rear and the shorter Aero gave us more room for the two 5" 90 degree fittings.
We changed to a resonator before our original muffler had visible problems, so we were not sure if the switch was necessary. But if the muffler is damaged, a change is necessary, and switching to resonator is a good choice and probably less expensive.
Somewhere on this forum, I did a writeup with pix on the Aero muffler replacement on our U280 3208t. i bought a 4" to 5" adapter to go from the turbo outlet elbow, used a short section of solid 5" to a 5" mandrel bend to the resonator, and re-used the rest of the stock tailpipe as it is 5" already. A couple mufller brackets, a short bit of quality time with my mig welder, and done. Total cost was under 200 bucks and took a couple-three hours at most. I didn't use flex pipe at all, the stuff wears out and the OEM muffler mount has plenty of movement designed into it. It's a mite louder than stock, but you can only tell that if a window is open. There were small gains in accelleration and maybe fuel economy (we avged 10.9 on our 3500 mile road trip including lots of huge climbs for things like Yellowstone) but I had no really good solid starting numbers for either. But I did see around 100 degrees less exhaust gas temp, which is nothing but a Good Thing and implies a fair bit of backpressure removed. Our neighbors can hear us coming, but they say it doen't seem any louder, just more... semi truck-like. *I* think it sounds fantastic. However in the interest of full disclosure, I am sort of an infant when it comes to the noise a decently breathing V8 makes, diesel, gas, nitro, or otherwise! If you can't find it ( I couldn't after brief search.. hmm. search button not working or did I never post pix? ) and want photos, lemme know and I'll post em here.
I can't find it in your history, either. Just a mention that you were going to do it here: What did you do to your coach today III (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=22378.msg159690#msg159690)
Ah so. Something that "was gonna" happen but getting ready for that road trip made it get lost in the shuffle.
Thanks for your input Jay....Greta to hear about the price too !! ^.^d