Your car’s muffler serves a variety of functions and it isn’t optional equipment on your car. Louisville Automotive Shop wants to share with you a few signs that your muffler isn’t working as well as it should be.
Terrible Gas Mileage
Bad gas mileage may not be a deal breaker for you, but it is a sign that there’s something going on somewhere. Very often the problem is with your muffler or the rest of the exhaust system. There are sensors all throughout the exhaust system that help your car’s onboard computer, or ECM, to control how the air and the fuel mix in the combustion chamber. Incorrect information from anywhere in the system means that the car’s performance suffers. Likewise, if the muffler isn’t doing its job, exhaust isn’t funneling out of the exhaust system properly and performance suffers.
Lots of Noise
There’s a reason that the muffler is called the muffler. It literally muffles sounds coming from the car’s engine and keeps that noise down. If cars didn’t have mufflers, roadways would be a lot noisier than they already are because combustion is an extremely loud process. There could be a variety of reasons that your car is louder, like a hole in the muffler somewhere or the muffler becoming separated from the rest of the exhaust system. The bottom line is that if the car is louder, you should start with the muffler.
Horrible Smells
The muffler itself isn’t responsible entirely for de-stinking the exhaust, but it definitely factors in. And if the muffler is having issues, it’s also possible that other parts of the car’s exhaust system are having trouble, too. The really big concern is whether you’re smelling gas or exhaust fumes inside the passenger compartment. That can actually become dangerous very quickly because many of the fumes that the exhaust system handles can cause physical symptoms like nausea, headaches, and worse. Any time you’re smelling exhaust smoke or gas inside the passenger compartment, you need to get your exhaust system checked.
Need to get your car’s muffler or entire exhaust system checked and find out what’s going on? Give us a call at Louisville Automotive Shop in Louisville, KY. We’ll be happy to set up a time for you to bring your car in for diagnostic testing. We can let you know exactly what’s wrong and set up a plan for fixing the source of the problem for you.