Has anyone ever heard of Flowmaster making a "knock-off" muffler of their own brand. I know the crossflow or series 80 muffler for our cars is 3 chamber muffler. I recently had my Magnaflow muffler replaced at a local muffler shop. I specifically mention a Flowmaster 80 series. The guy showed me a muffler that looked identical to a Flowmaster 80. He said it was made by Flowmaster and sold by them but was a 2 instead of 3 chamber muffler. It's not a Flowtech either. I bought it and had him install it and the sound and performance is incredible. I was wondering if anyone else has run across this.

 

If the sound and performance is incredible then you can be assured it is not a flowmaster

 

Yep. My exhaust guy sold me some a few years back and I ran them on my 81 Grand Prix. Sounded great but these were one in one out and not transverse mufflers like most of us use on our cars.

 

Flowmaster is fine for a stock thirdgen. You're not going to remove it and get big gains switching to another muffler.

 

apparently he did, he said it was incredible lol.

 

It's not uncommon for manufacturers to make "white box" versions of their own product, intended for major retailers to sell as their house brand, but I would be a little surprised if Flowmaster found any incentive to do that.

As far as the rest of your comment, sound is subjective: one of my neighbors has an 80 series on his camaro, standing next to my car, his about 30' away both idling, I can't hear my 12s car running over his 15s car... and I don't think his car sounds better, just louder. OTOH, I have an electric cutout on my car and it sounds absolutely evil at over 6000rpm WOT and the cutout open. As far as performance, the car "feels" faster because it's louder. Crossflow designs just suck and are hard to make flow well and control sound reasonably/not drone. Way, way back in the day the 80 series was dyno tested vs the stock muffler and showed a 20some hp loss. Honestly, the early 3rd gen exhausts with 2 mufflers were some of the best sounding ones out there, and the later 3rd gen and 4th gen mufflers were REALLY good from a performance standpoint. I had a 4th gen that I cut the intermediate pipe and was able to remove the muffler at the track by pulling 3 bolts, and I wasn't able to show a performance difference with or without the stock muffler running 11s @ 119mph.

 

True lol. Only reason I don't swap out my 80 is because I wouldn't know what to replace it with.

 

just pulling a muffler and running again with no tuning changes is not a good way to measure how efficient a muffler is. a lot of times, when you pull a restrictive muffler, it leans out the air fuel ratio to a point where the car makes less power. if you tune the car back for the free-er flowing exhaust, it will pick back up power and make more than with a muffler. fasterproms proved this point on his crown vic youtube video. worth checking out.

 

I was specifically told Flowmaster made a knock-off by my old exhaust man. They were one in-one out. Sounded great. I've had some exhaust that sounded better than my Flowmasters specifically Borla but my 3in 80 series sounds great and I doubt any horsepower loss from stock setup I removed . I just don't believe it.