HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER

Pipes

This history doesn’t go back too far in my memory, but it is hard to believe it has been 50 years since 1960. That was the era of the “muscle car”. I still have to roll my window down to get a better sound whenever I hear some guy come rolling along with a nice set of pipes. I always give him the “thumbs-up” sign to show my appreciation. By pipes I mean the exhaust system on a car. They all came with mufflers that made for a quiet ride, but that was not the desire of my generation. The best sound came from a set of glass packs on a Chevy. Ford sounded better with steel packed mufflers. Dual exhaust was mandatory for a really good sound.

We always kept our original mufflers, because when we got stopped by the police, they required you to have legal mufflers when you went in to have your inspection warning certified.

Another way to get the rumbling sound was to punch holes in your legal mufflers with a screw driver. I wonder how many guys punched holes in their father’s muffler and then regretted it when their Dad found out.

I well remember getting stopped one time in my ‘56 Ford (with glass packs) and the state trooper asking me to “hit it”. I gave a gentle push on the accelerator and it gave a low rumble. He then said, “I said hit it”. When I did, the loud “blap-blap-blap” that resulted convinced me that I was sunk. I was.

I even had an LP record at the time that was nothing but good sounds coming from different kinds of pipes. I guess there is something about the sound that just reaches down into your soul.

Another sound that was also illegal was the sound of Lake pipes. These were exhaust pipes that came directly off your exhaust manifold and exited just behind your front wheels. There were caps on the end that could be removed rather quickly with a 1/2” wrench. Without the resistance of mufflers, the car was a bit faster and they were popular at drag strips. The same sound could be achieved by running straight pipes, but these were a lot of trouble and were also illegal.

One trick that some of us unfortunate to have an automatic transmission had was the “wind-down”. By running the car up to about 40 mph in low gear, turning it off and letting it wind down, it would build up pressure that was released by turning the ignition on again. The sound coming from those glass packs was truly awesome. When Main Street was open for traffic, doing a “wind-down” between Market Street and Division Street heading east was a real hoot. The local constable was Jumbo Pusey, and he would just shake his head and yell from his position of the corner of Main and St. Peter’s streets, “Keep it down, George”. He knew we would only do it once and then be satisfied for the night. I later learned that this was not real good for the car, so I haven’t tried it lately. But that doesn’t stop me from rolling down my window and taking in the sound of a great set of “Pipes”.