I am building a pipe organ. A collection of tubes, created with a specific length and diameter. Pipes designed to direct sound pulses from one place to another in a most pleasant way. The sound pulses must move quickly from the cylinder head of our race engine to the exit on the left side of the car.
If done properly we will be deliciously rewarded with increased power and a sound that only a purebred can produce. If done improperly I will be thoroughly depressed and probably never return to this terrible place. I wouldn’t be able to stomach the smell of oil burning off mild steel as the TIG welder migrates in a zig zag pattern across the seams. Too many hours spent reading boring engineering journals. Too many hours drawing full scale sketches. To many hours cutting and welding, cutting and welding again.
But, on paper this should work. It should be great. In theory these pipes should be a great improvement over what once was, a pipe organ that sounded like an out-of-tune bat. And that tone def bat was robbing horsepower from our small Italian heart.
Austrian born Carlo Abarth got his start hand building race headers for tiny Fiats decades ago. He sensitively manipulated steel pipes until they were able to sing a song so beautiful that everyone had to have one of his headers. It seems that he had a talent for romancing exhaust gasses away from the minature race engines that he tuned. I feel as though there may be a little bit of Carlo at work right here in Fennville. We’ll find out in May.
