So I found that Corsa makes these cool after-market exhausts that cancel out engine drone.

http://www.corsaperf.com/technology.aspx

Of course, they don't make anything for Mini. Does anyone know of a similar exhaust system that's for R56-R57 Minis? The exhaust drone at 1500RPM is the one thing that bugs me about my car.

 

You'd probably get better results in the R56 forum.

 

Whoops! My fault.

 

The drone comes from the exhaust , not the engine, with many non-stock exhausts.

Dave

 

When and why are you ever cruising at 1500 rpm?

 

Exhaust drone is what I meant, not engine drone.

And the car (an automatic) sits at 1500RPM during city driving all the time. Basically between 15mph and 50mph, any time I'm off the gas the engine shifts up and settles into 1500RPM or so, which results in serious drone when the top is down.

Back to the point, are there any drone-cancelling mufflers or exhaust systems available for R57 minis?

 

Drive in manual mode to keep the rpm slightly higher? I do that in my e46 all the time to prevent hearing drone at low rpm. On my manual r56 I use the throttle to accomplish the same thing.

 

I read this last night so I made a mental note to listen to my exhaust at 1500RPM and it's a tomb at that RPM. Though I have a manual and Magnaflow.

 

I had a custom 2.5" exhaust installed using a Flowmaster Hushpower DBx Muffler. To help kill drone Flowmaster designed a one-off 12" close chamber port. I also had the pipe shop create a 28" long close chamber port.

The close chamber ports help to cancel noise but don't impede exhaust flow. The close chambers simply allows the sound to travel down the port and then bounce back to cancel specific frequencies. The frequencies that are cancelled depend on the length of the closed chamber.

'Ive attached a few pics. I know it looks bizarre but it works!

 

helmholtz exhaust resonator is what the one is called which hangs off. Popular item with high reving motors.

 

Hi Scott,

it's very cool to see that someone has done the helmholtz resonator mod to a mini cooper exhaust! How effective is it at getting rid of drone? Also, how much louder than the stock exhaust is your setup overall? Are you in a convertible or hard top?

I see the 28" length of pipe, but where's the 12" length? Is it inside that housing that's about halfway along the exhaust piping?

In my case I'm mainly just trying to kill the exhaust drone that my mini S's stock exhaust creates between 1200 and 1500 RPM (super-annoying when the top is down) - do you think that adding a resonating branch/closed chamber port like you did would help?