Pops & Bangs

Popping, Crackling & Gurgling

Have you ever been curious about that burble sound coming from an AMG or a supercar? They’re called pops and bangs. When you accelerate, your exhaust produces the incredible roaring sound that we are all used to. As you lift your foot off the throttle, your exhaust starts popping, crackling and gurgling, which adds a whole lot of fun and character to the driving experience.

So if you have a pops and bangs tuning file installed, when you shift gears you will no longer experience a drop in sound. You can mark each shift with a loud pop & bang.

Performance Advantage

More to the point, what would a tuning improvement be without a performance advantage. Aside from the sound benefits, pops and bangs additionally reduce or completely remove turbo lag after deceleration.

Pops and bangs can be achieved through many different methods of modification. The main focus is around altering the timing of the car’s ignition map. On most cars, you want the combustion of fuel/air mix to happen just after TDC (Top Dead Centre – where the piston is highest in the cylinder). This means that the piston is only just on its way back down to the bottom of the cylinder – an explosion at this point gives it a (pretty significant) helping hand to force the piston down to the bottom of the cylinder as quickly as possible. The exact timing varies from engine to engine, but this is how the ignition is timed to produce maximum power.

Exhaust Notes

Pops and bangs are generated when an explosion echoes in the exhaust. This is either fuel touching the hot exhaust before exploding, or an explosion happening earlier in the system and reverberating through the exhaust. The most common way of achieving this is by retarding the ignition timing so the fuel/air mix ignites later in the engine’s cycle. If timed correctly, the exhaust valve will be opening to allow gas – along with pops and bangs – to escape. This is what most commonly gives you the effect.

Many modern automatic sports cars will generate a pleasing burble or pop when changing gear – this is achieved in exactly the same way, but not just for the sake of producing that satisfying sound.

In a manual car, you depress the clutch and lift off the accelerator when changing gear. This reduces the load on the gears, allowing them to separate so a new one can be slid into position. In an automatic car, however, you can keep your foot buried in the carpet and flick the “+” paddle until you run out of cogs. This is because when you flick the paddle, the ECU retards (or sometimes cuts entirely) the ignition to reduce the load on the gears for just a split second. As above, this means either some un-burnt fuel makes its way to the hot exhaust, or the exhaust port is opening as the explosion occurs in the cylinder.

Adrenaline Rush

So would you like some healthy adrenaline rush and some extra heads turning when you drive by? Then pops and bangs tuning is the best solution for you. You might have heard the effects of pop & bang tuning on some of the most revered supercars on the planet – now it’s your turn!