Dirty Harry said:
A mate runs a 1775 and had a csp phyton who was to noisy so switched it for a standard beetle exhaust in the same way as i have and the engine was more torquey than with the csp, i noticed the same when i switched my vintage speed to my old beetle exhaust setup!
I mainly switched the the vs as i found it to noisy, liked the looks though.
Yes, a bit of back pressure will improve torque on any engine.
A 1776 cc engine will push through around 12% more exhaust gas than a stock 1600.
The stock exhaust was deliberately designed to be quite restrictive which, along with the fan needing exponentially more power as the revs rise and the restrictive stock carb and manifold, meant that a 1600 engine was only producing a bit under 60 bhp.
It was done so that the engine was under stressed which made it reliable, long lasting (for back then) and it could be driven flat out all day on the autobhan without problems.
Essentially, driving a stock beetle engine flat out was the equivalent of driving other 1600cc engines, producing say 90 bhp, at not much more than half throttle.
So to come back to the point of this thread, what exhaust you run will depend a lot on the amount of gas you want to put through it.
If you have a 1776 engine built for torque and rarely run it at more than 4000rpm then you will probably find a beetle exhaust with twin bus pipes will suit your style of driving.
If on the other hand you have a powerful free revving 1776 with say bigger valves and a 110/120 cam then you will need a more free flowing exhaust, otherwise the power will simply fade away at anything much over 4000 rpm.
If you have an engine of 2liters or more then a stock exhaust is hopeless even if its a torque built engine.
The rally beetles of old used what looked like stock exhausts but in fact the baffles had been removed and the tail pipes were considerably wider.
