Question about tongue mufflers. Is it wise to drill more holes in the tongue mufflers Big Art and Jim Lee type?
Tongue mufflers can be pretty restrictive. I usually drill a whole extra row of holes to let the engine breath. If you can't exhale, you can't inhale either!! I prefer tube type mufflers because they allow the engine to exhaust better as long as the final opening is big enough, and if it isn't I make it bigger. The easier it is for the engine to exhaust, the better fuel draw it will have also. The sound doesn't seem to change much either. The muffler still muffles the sound and you can still tap it for muffler pressure. The best example I have seen of this lately is on another club members model with a Double Star .60 in it. It had an extra row of holes in the tongue muffler and they were all plugged up with screws. This was a used model and engine so we were not that familiar with how the thing would run. To trouble shoot an issue with something on it, it was suggested to remove all the screws and see how the engine responded. The model has a limited tank compartment and one of the things we were working on was getting a run time long enough for the pattern. He had already dropped down to 5% nitro, and removing all the screws freed things up to the extent of making the run time shorter, so he put about half of them back in, and this sent things back the other way and helped with the other issue, which I can't remember exactly what it was right now. Engines are pretty much all the same and basic things like intake dimensions and exhaust dimensions affect how the engine runs no matter if it's the hot rood sitting in your garage or the model airplane hanging on the wall in your garage. The exhaust and venturi size can affect each other and work for or against each other. Remember Eddy Murphy stuffing bananas in the tail pipe of his Beverly Hills Cop buddy's car??
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee