When we say “sweet Beetle sounds”, it is not supposed to invoke the tune of “She Loves You” in your mind. It just means that motorists no longer have to endure that annoying noise from an engine. The engine generates noise because of its operation, in fact the more power it produces, the louder the noise becomes. As a result, the car is not just an air pollutant nowadays, but a contributor to noise pollution too! (And that’s just the engine noise—we haven’t talked about those horns yet.)

The engine of a Beetle may not be as heavy-duty as that of a truck, so it is not really supposed to make that annoying noise. But if it does, then the car is probably not hooked up with one of the most vital VW parts, the Volkswagen muffler. The muffler is basically aimed at lessening the noise that comes from the engine bay. It is an integral part of the exhaust system because it is like the second to the last phase before the exhaust comes out of the tail pipe. How is a muffler able to “muffle” all that engine noise?

According to howstuffworks.com, mufflers practically “cancel out sound”. They are made of tons of tubes so that they could resonate the sound that the engine makes. This will therefore make the noise less prominent. (After all, you would not want your car to garner arched eyebrow stares just because it is so noisy.) While the Beetle’s engine may not churn out thousands of horsepower, its combustion process still shakes the rest of its VW parts. So if you want to keep your Beetle a well-loved street creature, make sure that it creates only a friendly noise.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Beetle Lovin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.