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Ray Flugger and the Sound of Silence |
Written by Hailey Boss
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
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In the 1980's, particularly in California, sprint racing became very popular as racing enthusiasts sprouted like mushrooms in tree branches. Race tracks were opened in many states and official sprint racing tournaments are held regularly. As exuberant as it seems, a lot of people became quite unspoken in their protest against these competitions. Mostly villagers from the nearby suburbs, they altogether have one major complain, the loud, disturbing, blaring noise from the vehicles. Since demolishing and relocating an arena would be overly costly, there is only one resolution that the organizers can think of, that is, to silence the racing cars. A mandate was given to racers that they would lose racing privilege if their competition entry vehicles would not meet the noise level standard. Sadly, all attempts to silence the race engines without sacrificing speed and power repeatedly failed. Ray Flugger, an experienced racing proponent with over 26 years of exhaust design experience, dedicated himself to building a knowledge base of how the engine cycle works and how it is affected by volume, sound and heat in the exhaust system. He began engineering mufflers that tends to the noise output from the engines and at the same time he improved the sound quality of the vehicle on which it is installed. Working out of a small 800 square foot barn in Kenwood, Robert became well known to the entire state of California as a leading specialist when it comes to the exhaust system. Flowmaster used hard science with their exhaust engineering. Gas, heat and sound are all transmitted and dissipated out the exhaust system, bursting with noise. Flowmaster researched the impact of header length, pipe diameter, H-pipe equalization or back-pressures effect on engine performance so that they could reduce the sound level that the exhaust system emits. One exhaust innovation that the company presented to the racing community is the well known "suitcase muffler". Reducing noise levels to the minimum, the manufacturers added handles to the square shaped mufflers for easy carrying of personnel and drivers through the race pits. At first it was the sprint race cars that was able to use Flowmaster exhaust mufflers but as time goes by manufacturers of performance street, muscle cars, trucks, street rods, rv's and motor homes were able to incorporate the mufflers to the vehicles. "Presently operating in two ultra-modern facilities together totaling over 400, 000 sq. ft., one in Santa Rosa, and the other in West Sacramento, Flowmaster Inc. operates the only Research and Design facilities of its kind in the world. They are now developing their signature product SuperFlow SF-7100 engine dynamometer with a feature that is dubbed as E.C.A. (engine cycle analysis). Flowmaster also utilizes Spectrum Analyzers to fine ""tune"" the sound of their mufflers for optimum performance." After all these decades and success that came with it, Ray Flugger still is active and hands on with the R&D department. He sees to it that the production of his Flowmaster products still maintains the standards that he imposed 20 years ago. To this day, the name of Ray Flugger and Flowmaster Inc. loudly resonates in highways and race tracks through the quality products installed in every racing machine. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
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