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Exhaust Mods to increase HP and Mileage?


redtomatoman

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Has anyone installed an aftermarket exhaust system such as flowmaster or dynaflow? If so, did it do anything? Increase HP or MPG?

I'm aware that Chrysler has a good idea of how to design a car and may have already designed the Journey's exhaust such that these systems only change sound and do markedly decrease backflow pressure. Just wondering. . .

Peace.

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There unfortunately aren't a lot of options for the Journey. I'd also check out Magnaflow, but I doubt you'll find much.

As for opening up flow.... I dunno, you'd pretty much have to do at least a cat-back to get any extra flow; and even headers back for any major performance gains.

You're not going to find new headers and stuff like that for this vehicle. It's just not that kind of car.

Edited by Eric Meyers
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As for your comment on Chrysler knowing how to design a car... I don't know man, these cars sure have had a lot of problems in their few short years.

I think you could argue against Chrysler's case on that one. I like my Journey, but I get pretty frustrated with the quality and mentality of how they went about a lot of things.

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There unfortunately aren't a lot of options for the Journey. I'd also check out Magnaflow, but I doubt you'll find much.

As for opening up flow.... I dunno, you'd pretty much have to do at least a cat-back to get any extra flow; and even headers back for any major performance gains.

You're not going to find new headers and stuff like that for this vehicle. It's just not that kind of car.

Thanks. I figured as much. The target buyer is family haulers, not the average gear head willing to shell out tons of dough on exhaust systems, etc. I was just wondering about other's experience. I have no idea, but I suspect the exhaust is adequate and not overly restrictive anyway.

Peace.

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As for your comment on Chrysler knowing how to design a car... I don't know man, these cars sure have had a lot of problems in their few short years.

I think you could argue against Chrysler's case on that one. I like my Journey, but I get pretty frustrated with the quality and mentality of how they went about a lot of things.

Chrysler has a long history of designing cars. They know exactly what they are doing. Financially strapped and on the brink of bankruptcy in recent years is not an ideal environment to work out all the engineering bugs on a new vehicle. Not making excuses for Dodge here, but at least I can understand. My Dakota has 215K miles on it and still going strong, so they have been doing something right. Anyway, that neither here nor there. . . This isn't a Dakota forum.

Although I drove many cars in the buying process before purchasing my Journey, I likely would not have even considered the Journey if it wasn't for my experience with my Dakota. The 2011 Journey was simply the best vehicle. Better than the Equinox, Forester, Venza, CX7, Sportage, Murano, and Edge, IMO. Hoping my 2011 redesign is going to stand the test of time better than the '09 and '10 models. So far, no problems. I think someone in the new Chrysler finally gets it about quality if the recent vehicles are any indication. Mentality, now that's a different story. Chrysler, has always done things a bit differently than the other 2 Detroit factories. Sometimes its awesome, sometimes its a flop.

Peace.

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  • 7 months later...

Yeah like another poster said. headers just are not going to happen. Like it was mentioned Cat back is the bets solution for flow and mileage but one thing to consider here.... If you could find or make a cat back system unless you are able to tune the ecu you will only be able to use a small portion of the potential or it may actually hurt performance. Back on my G8 forum there were all of these guys doing intake and exhaut modifications and they ran slower at that track because the ECU was not tunable at the time. I would personally just go with a performance replacement muffler like dynomax super turbos or something. I made an intake tube to go between my TB and air box and put super turbos on my V6 G8 and gained almost 2 10ths and 2 MPH in the quarter. Thats an estimated 15 RWHP. I would recomend keeping mods simple untne we can tune this puppy.

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  • 3 weeks later...

don't know of exhaust mods, but I looked in mopar's site and they listed a CAI for the journey at about $400

(but was made of metal, so it looks, so don't know how much colder than OEM setup- which looks good).

Also (best after warranty period) hypertech lists a tuner for Dodge Journey also, to increase Hp, mileage.

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  • 6 months later...

As I understand it, headers are not even possible on the newer DJ's with the 3.6 Pentastar since this engine does not use any bolt-on exhaust manifolds, they're part of the actual engine casting.

Edited by PaShyn
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I replaced both the mufflers on my 3.6 to a straight through flow muffler from Megan Racing. I am averaging 24MPH. It is pretty much 80%highway 20%city. Not sure what it was before that. But that number is still pretty depressing. Not sure if there is any way to squeeze exta mpg's out of these motors.

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I am going to assume you mean 24 mpg and not miles per hour... If so, I wouldn't be disappointed at all. I'm currently getting between 22 and 23 mpg and am happy as a pig in mud! You want to talk depressing; I traded in an '08 Hemi Jeep Commander on my Journey. I went from ~15 mpg to 22-23 mpg, thus my joy with the Journey's mileage. Given the weight (the Journey is heavy) and the size (it is 2 inches longer than my Commander was and is the same width while only being 6" less in height) I think getting anything above 22 is superb for this zippy little 6 cylinder engine. It still amazes me that the Journey has much more room inside than the Commander did (it was three row seating also). The only thing I've been able to figure out is that the 6 cylinder doesn't take up as much space as that Hemi did and they moved that extra room to the interior. With the third row up in the Commander there was no storage to speak of behind the seat; with the third row up in the Journey, I've got room for suitcases behind the seat. As for the mileage; mine isn't finished being broken in yet (~2K miles on the odometer), but, if it stays in the mid 20's for an average I'll be happy. I got 28 mpg, pure highway driving, on the one "trip" we've taken in it and I was tickled to death...

You want to talk poor mileage...how about '11 RAM 2500 LongHorn with the High Output Cumins Turbo Diesel with a 12,000 lb. fifth wheel trailer hooked up? Believe it or not, I'm thrilled with the 10.5 to 12 mpg I get out of that rig. There are a lot of RVers out there in the 8 to 9 mpg range and few that would be overjoyed with 8!

Back to the original post though...a high flow exhaust won't do anything except change the exhaust sound... I tried that with the Commander for a while...Magnaflow CAT back, CAI, etc. even with a tuner all I gained was noise. No mileage improvements, just noise and higher maintenance (the CAI needed more cleaning and re-oiling than the stock air box), so, I stripped it all off and went back to stock. Unless you are going to do some radical changes to the base power plant, there aren't any "add-ons" that will get you any real (significant) gains in fuel usage. The designers, nowadays, actually do a very good job of wringing the mileage out these modern engines. It isn't like the old days where the engineers were concerned with HP and to heck with mileage, gas was cheap. Now that there are CAFE regulations and gas is through the roof, the engineers do a pretty good job of getting the most bang for the buck out these engines. There are compromises made for drive-ability reasons that may cut into the mileage a bit (a quieter exhaust, although my '13 R/T gets really throaty when pushed), ease of maintenance etc), there aren't a whole lot of things you can do, that are economically feasible to them to wring significant mileage improvements out of them. There are things you could do, but, the increase to payback time is so large it isn't worth the effort; it doesn't pay to pick up .6 mpg when the cost is going to be in the thousand dollar or more range, you'd never make your money back.

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