Like I said:

Because people got sick and tired of the fake burble.

Fake is fake

 

Umm, you you keep saying it fake. How is a burble fake? It can be caused by a reason that is not what you percieve to be the "true" source of a burble, but the fact remains that the sound is still there. Whether it is caused by "acoustic feedback" or a rich fuel/air mixture in the exhaust stream, it's not like someone's got a speaker bolted to the bottom of the chassis blaring out popping noises. It is still being produced by the car.

But with the mod-happy folks around here I wouldn't put it past someone to do the speaker thing...

 

I think the fake part comes from the fact it's programmed into an injected engine that has precise tuning of it's fuel to duplicate a 60's muscle/sports car with carburetor that can't control it's rich mixture.

 

Elaine: Fake, fake, fake, fake.

 

Not true........watch any race with turbo cars and they all will spit out flames when downshifting and braking.

 

It wasn't fake........

The ECU timing was just a way of bringing back the cause of the pop from the good old days before computer controls. How can you have a fake burble...................from a CD? Geez.......

 

Oh, OK, It's real ... just like the fake hood scoops and simulated "go fast stripes" (oh "racing stripes").

I guess "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and maybe some people feel the need to imitate attributes of other cars (old ones at that). That's cool, to each their own. They are flattering the past. But it's still fake.

 

Perhaps "phony" might be a little better word. The point is that it was programmed in for acoustic effect, not part of generating power. In the old days it was a side effect of making more power. On a modern engine it is wasting fuel to create an acoustic effect. At least to some of us, there is something disingenuous about that.

 

in the sense that it doesn't nothing for actual performance, and is software programmable if you can hack the ECU. Don't go comparing this to race cars, that have much, much different tuning goals than do our cars. But here's another twist. It is wasting a tiny amount of gas with each pop. So if you could eliminate that in all 250k Minis produced each year, it starts to add up to real gas. The guys at Mini also admit that there's less room to play with the software here, as it does effect the CO2 emissions that are regulated in Europe. You want pop? Get an old Mini with carbs, run a straight pipe. Heck, my Mustang with a carb and the glasspacks it came with when I bought it could wake the dead on a 2-1 downshift on sunday morning. With the FI, it's much less of an issue.

So it's a real noise, but it isn't a consiquence of something that is tuned for power, so it's a cosmetic effect. Also, if you notice, it's much more pronouced whent the engine is cold (at least on the R50/R53) as the ECU doesn't shut the injectors down on engine braking as agressively, to heat the cats up.

Matt

ps, if you read about the history of turbo cars and turbo race cars, some put fuel injectors in the exhaust manifold to squirt fuel in there to pre-spool larger turbos. Don't know if anyone is doing this anymore, but for race cars, the fact that this could lead to more frequent service wasn't an issue, as the motor was pretty much torn down after each race. The notion that an unburnt 11:1 mixture of fuel would blow up a turbo means it's a crappy turbo!

 

Well said. I don't know big words like disingenuous but it sounds good.

Matt, a question here. With the JCW catback on my 04 MINI there was no "burble" ... NADA. When I dumped it for the Borla Race, all of a sudden it had significant burble but not in the sense of the popping on OEM 05/06 cars, more like original, what I would call "muscle car" burble. No change in ECU, just different mufflers. So what's that all about?

 

I honestly don't know if the different backpressures would effect this much, but the 500 ci caddy engines sounded like "woosh" with a stock exhaust sytem. Put on some FLowmasters, and it is one nasty sounding big block!

Matt

 

Lack of baffling/constriction. Just like a straight pipe will be too loud.

But that would be fake right.................

 

Yeah, I think that's it. It was just a different muffler sound, nothing to do with fake burble.

A neighbor near us has one of the Caddys with the Vette engine and a Billy Boat catback and when he starts the car, its almost like the old days "almost". Pretty loud.

I was at a speed shop and someone came in with an old Hemi and headers and the ground shook. Forget what that felt like. The wife likes the cars to sound like cars should but said if I changed anything to sound like that ... she would kill me (so to speak).

 

Uhh, no. That's not emulating anything to make it appear like something that its not. Rather, it actually might add a bit (maybe a tiny bit) of HP.

Apples and Oranges.

 

That's why old car guys either have hearing protection, or are close to deaf!

Matt

 

Yeah, but there still is something when you can actually feel the car (as in the ground shaking) rather than just hear it

 

even with it's little 298, it was fun to have a car where the motors torque would twist the car, and putting your battery over the passenger side rear wheel actually did something fro traction!

And the glasspacks scared the crap out of the little honda drivers in the area.... Too loud for me, the Flowmasters on it now are more my style...

Matt

 

Only $50! Man, my local JiffyLube quoted me something close to $500. I'll definitely be getting my muffler bearings from those guys from now on. In fact, I'm going to go order one right now. Thanks for the tip!

I can't wait to get it installed. It'll be great!

 

This does bring up an interesting point though. The '05 MINI burble machine is considered a fake because it provides no conceivable improvement in real performance but enhances one effect that often accompanies high performance, the sound. Fake isn't the right word though. It is poseur-ish and we don't want to be poseurs. It's a Poseur modification.

Uh oh. Making this distinction leads to a slippery slope. A lowered suspension looks better and maybe 90% of us lower for this reason, yet it can be justified by the "enhanced handling" provided. Da-daaa: it is a Performance Modification. (Would anyone spend money on this if it didn't change the appearance of the car? Okay - some.)

Aftermarket wheels look better but provide better handling due to their lighter weight, performance. But what if they aren't lighter or are so large that the handling and ride is crap? In that case the modification is not a performance modification rather it is a cosmetic one. Chrome - cosmetic. Paint/stripes - cosmetic. CF components? They are lighter - performance. What about those that look like CF but are either applique or one layer of CF over FG? Poseur. Unless its a splitter or scoop - performance.

So we spend large bux on all manner of mods to get the look/sound we want as long as there is a perception that the modification has some perceivable performance enhancement to it. Otherwise most people wouldn't buy it at the high price. That's a large part of the vendor flame wars that occur arround here. The vendor has some nice looking piece accompanied by some unverifiable performance claim to justify the high price. For some that's enough and for some it's not and when those two groups take sides it gets personal.

I don't see what's wrong with the poseur mods as long as they don't make the car out to be something that it is not. The burble doesn't do that, it just makes it noisier. Maybe it should be a dealer configurable option or else on switchable by the driver. Does anyone remember the '69 GTO Pontiac "The Judge"? Had factory exhaust cutouts you could turn on with a handle. The TV commercial showed them turned on just as the car rumbled through the drive-in. Oh wait - they provide lower back pressure so that's a Performance Modification.

 

All of the examples you gave are either an option or aftermarket. NONE of them are standard. On the other hand, exhaust pop was there for everyone from the factory. IMO, that is a BIG difference. People have the right to be poserish or ricey or whatever. But it becomes a problem when the company makes all the buyers posers. I am a selective poser. I do not like chrome things but I like the look of more air dragging JCW body kit.

 

I wouldn't go that far. The term poseur is applied to the owner. The owner is "posing". The burble is fake. What your saying, I believe, is that if you add fake things, your posing. Cars can't pose, people pose.

And for that matter, the favorite "go fast stripes" aka racing stripes, might be construed as posing to the extreme. After all, your not racing. But that is another issue

 

Oh yeah, body modifications. If it aint doing ground effects, whats the point?

 

kind of like all the MINIs built since the BMW buyout?

As for the "go faster" stripes, I don't think anyone (owners or non-owners) honestly think that some vinyl adds horsepower or makes the car handle better. They are simply there to make the car appeal more to the individual owner. To say this is a negative thing or "poseurish" simply isn't true.

It's like saying that the fact that (most) Mini's have backseats is an attempt to imitate the backseats in a Porsche 911. They both have virtually unusable rear seating so they must perform the same, right?

I guess it's unfortunate we all don't have totally original vehicles like Rav-4s...

 

As to the racing stripes, I said "might be construed". Outside the MINI community you may find people laughing at them (personally, I can take them or leave them, I like my bonnet clean).

I find the rear seats to be fine in the MINI. I've sat back there and was amazed how much room (although getting out aint fun). I've also owned a 911 and the back seat there aint fit for man or beast ... or dog.

 

It is pretending to be something it is not. It is pretending to be a side-effect of a high performance carb. when it is actually an intentional creation using a computer and fuel injection. However, it wasn't obvious that it was not a real characteristic of the engine.

Lowering a car is often done just for looks. So not pretending to be something it is not. People do it because they like the way it makes the car sit. It is an honest mod.

You are confusing a Puritan-like ethic that says all mods must be for performance to be legit, with an ethic that says mods should not be an artificial emulation of something they are not.

A lowered car is a lowered car.

Steel wheels with wheel covers to make them look like aluminum or mag wheels would be equivalent to the MINI burble. Aluminum wheels that look like aluminum wheels are not equivalent to the burble. It doesn't matter whether they are designed for show or go. Wheels can be a decorative element. That is legitimate. Spinners are obviously for show. They make no pretense at being for competition. So, they have more integrity than the burble.

Many decorative mods were inspired by performance enhancements, but if they aren't really trying to be what they are not, they aren't phony. One could claim that the dual exhausts on the MCS R56 are phony. They look like they belong to a dual exhaust system usually associated with larger V engines. However, they may actually some small functional purpose. By increasing the area the end of the exhaust displaces in the air, they decrease the air pressure behind them -- reducing the back pressure on the exhaust. On the other hand the reason for them being the way they are is probably because they make it look more than it is. So, they probably join the burble in being somewhat phony.

Agree.

This is where we disagree. The burble is trying (by artificial means) to make the 1.6 liter engine sound like a larger carbureted engine.