What's up everyone.

Thought it would be fun to do a write up on my experience with driving a muffler-deleted Crown Vic. Well, almost muffler-deleted. I got some straight-through mufflers installed for inspection purposes. It's a bare minimum inspection here. Anyways, on with it.

For a little background, my Crown Vic is my first car and I got it by surprise. It's a 2004 model year P71 ex-Sheriff Car from Berkeley County, SC. Presumably an off duty vehicle because it had no livery and I can see cutouts for the lights on the inside of the car under the visors. The back seat is cloth and not vinyl, same goes for the carpeting. Tan interior. We got it at an auction August 2019 for $800. It had 82K miles, the paint was peeling and it had a CEL (which ended up being a thermostat; $10 and 5 minutes labor). I've been working on getting the car ready for a fresh new paint job for the past year or so and ever since it rolled in the driveway, the Crown Vic hasn't had the stock mufflers since. Literally got to work on cutting the mufflers off the following day.

Fast forward to now, I've DIYed a catback exhaust with resonated tips and straight-through mufflers. For those curious on the exact setup, it's stock down to the H-pipe, cut off the mufflers, replaced them with Totalflow 2102 10" straight through mufflers, which then run to flexpipe attached to Flowmaster 15802 tailpipes. I'm using DC Sports Resonated Exhaust Tips to control the rasp and drone of the overall exhaust. Mufflers are subject to change during my quest to eliminate drone; considering a dual muffler setup. For an accurate description of the sound, it's pretty loud (although the 4 cats quiet it down) and it's got a deep tone. If you get your foot into the throttle a good bit, you'll get a nice growl with no rasp. Expect drone at crusing speed, though. Time to share my thoughts.

First off, teenage dudes and loud cars are a match made in heaven. Even if it's some car that sounds like crap when its loud, most of us still love them. I can attest to this; there's a kid in my neighborhood that drives a '95 Civic Coupe with a fart can slapped on it. I may not be a fan of it, but I bet he loves it. As a born-and-raised southern kid with access to YouTube that just got a V8 cop car, you already know I wanted it to be loud, I could make it loud for free, and I knew I'd love it.

And oh boy, I love it. I'm still running the same setup, and it sounds amazing. There's something about the raw energy, presence and sound of an American V8 that is just better than having mufflers that alter the characteristic. The best part is my neighbors don't hate me. About half of the "cars" in our neighborhood are trucks, and decently loud ones at that. The neighbor across from us has a nice SVT Raptor with an exhaust, the dude down the street drives an old Silverado 1500 with a decently loud setup, there's a guy with a Ram that's loud, etc. Point being is I fit right in. The only caveat is drone. Cabin drone can be a bit of an issue, and that's something I'm striving to tackle. It's mainly bad on the interstate below 70 MPH.

Regular driving, it's a bit annoying with the drone, but I still like its presence nonetheless. Back road cruising, oh boy it's fun and the drone actually compliments the exhaust. And of course on WOT, it sounds like nothing else and it's simply great. My only suggestions are don't dump it at the axle, you will gain a terrible migraine from driving any longer than 5 minutes, and resonate the exhaust to some extent to eliminate the rasp.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this fun little midnight write up.

It sounds like you're having fun with it. You'll probably find over time that your idea of how you like the exhaust will change or you'll make other changes that you'll either grow out of or can't live without.
These are great first cars. And I'm not saying that because you can find them for decent prices but because they're pretty easy to find in junk yards and you can hit up a nicer crown vic or Grand Marquis or Town car for nicer seats and interior parts or other features pretty cheap to add on to the P71. And if you're starting with one of those other cars it works the other way too and you can get the heavy duty parts off a P71 to improve the handling or whatever.

Guy made his car loud and much later wanted to trade it. He just got tired of it. Made a deal but the dealer said to put a muffler on it. After the guy put a muffler on it he fell in love with the car again and didn't trade it after all.

My dad told me that story about his 30's Ford convertible. I'm old now and have been involved with racing motorcycles all of my life but never had a real loud car.

Tip from an old guy: You should have a car that girl's parents like.

So OP is the vibe the same today?

Yessir. Recently just drove it to Ohio and a week later back down south. The drone is tolerable IMO with the way I've treated the car. My only complaint is the ghetto solutions I've used to hold my exhaust together, which leads to several small exhaust leaks. A quest to be completed for sure.

Reminds me of a evening after supper, was a warm, humid summer evening, Some other troopers and I had supper together and we decided (mostly was our Sgt's decision, it really was a stinking hot edvening) to hold ourselves a "checking detail" (some call them "road blocks", we were checking driver's licenses, registrations, maybe insurance, lights, mufflers, etc ... chat with drivers too, looking for drunks too) at the "Y" down near Glasgow. We pulled up, put out some flares to alert drivers ... and mostly to drive the darn gnats away. It was in the mid 1980s.

First car I checked was a brand new '86 red Thunderbird, it sounded plumb aweful too. I recall it so well because I had a blue '85 at home, except mine was quiet like. Was a teenager driving, I mentioned the noise, he said it came like that. I bent down and looked underneath, it had holes sawn in the muffler, 1-1/2 or 2 inch holes like you cut with a hole saw in a drill, and they were in the bottom side only like they was done done with the car on a lift or ramps. Brand new car it was, exhaust was near spotless except for them holes.

Well, registration showed it was his mother's new car, registration showed it was just a few days old. I wrote the kid a ticket for operating a motor vehicle with a defective or altered exhaust, it was set for JV court. Being an equipment violation, only a $15 fine then, no points. But because he was a juvenile, his parent or guardian had to be present even just to pay it ... which meant his mother would know.

Years later I worked a deer wreck in another part of the county and it was this kid who was no longer a kid who was driving his own car and had hit a deer (it happens). He reminded me of the muffler ticket, said his mother refused to let him drive her car until he paid to have a brand new exhaust put on it at the Ford dealership. He told me he washed a lot of cars to earn money to do that. He got "teary eyed" talking about his mother, she had passed away by this time.

Last I heard, he preaches at a church.

Second car I checked, driver was suspended. Quick arrest and I was in my AC cool car headed to the jail which at the time, was still in the building built in the 1830s, cornerstone said 1839. No AC there, just windows open to the night & fans, exposed plumbing & wire runs throughout and really thick walls with narrow door ways and a single big cell upstairs over the kitchen. Our new jail opened in 1988, the old one was remodeled and is now the national headquarters for a college fraternity.

That's a very interesting story. Sucks when people don't do exhausts right, especially if it's not their car (my mother would destroy me if I changed the exhaust on her Civic, haha).