Quote:
Originally Posted by XfireZ51
Pete,
The C5 Z06 had Titanium mufflers at one point. And so did the
SR-71 Blackbird.
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Ah...the SR-71 did not have mufflers, however, it and many other aircraft have titanium in their structures, skins and engine parts.
The C5 Z06's Ti exhaust was developed by Arvin, an exhaust supplier back then, and TIMET, at the time the world's largest supplier of titanium raw materials, and weighed 41% less than the base C5 muffler system. In fact, from a flow standpoint, the Z06 exhaust was not significantly different than the base system. The performance advantage came in the Ti exhaust's reduction in weight.
The two biggest weight reductions in a C5 Z06 were the tires, which trimmed 23.4-lbs and the Ti mufflers, which trimmed 17.6-lbs.
Another interesting fact is that a 2001 Z06 weighed 420-lbs less than the best performing stock C4, the ’95 ZR1, which explains why the '01 Z06 with less power and torque was quicker than a stock '95...and, I might add, the main reason I had the late Jim Van Dorn do his "Automasters Street Skinner" engine package on Barney. In its final form, Barney's "SS" engine made 513-hp SAE, enough to keep me ahead of those pesky C5s.