No stranger to putting its own spin on the Ford Mustang, Roush Performance has never been at a loss for ways to make the pipes of the pony car wail. Tuning that raucous rumble, however, is another story. Until now, most active exhaust setups have been two-dimensional affairs, switching between a demure rumble at idle to full Blutarsky at wide-open throttle. To fill out the middle ground in between and then some, Roush has come up with an active exhaust system that allows owners to create a personalized exhaust tune via an iOS app.
Like most tuned exhausts, Roush relies on a valve or “flap” in the exhaust piping to alter the path of the exhaust gases as they exit; closing the valve generally diverts them through the mufflers for quiet cruising, while opening it lets them escape in their natural sonorous state. But the Roush Active Exhaust app adds a new wrinkle to the operation, letting users set up custom, infinitely variable operating parameters to fine tune both the timing and degree of the exhaust valves’ operation. The app runs on any iOS device (Roush tells us an Android version is in the works), and communicates to the car’s electronics via a Wi-Fi dongle (included with the other hardware) that plugs into the car’s OBD port. The exhaust valves are operated by solenoids that take their instructions from the car’s existing wiring harness.
Fire up the app and you’ll be greeted by options for Touring (quiet), Sport (less quiet), Track (wide open), or Custom modes. The first three are self-explanatory, and it’s the latter we’re concerned about here. Select “Custom Tune,” and you’ll find a graph that dominates the screen; vehicle speed is represented on the vertical axis, throttle position on the horizontal. Using your finger or a stylus, you then start filling in the boxes at the desired points with the colors that correspond to how loud you want the exhaust to be; red is 100-percent open, and goes down in 10-percent increments from there with corresponding colors as illustrated underneath the graph. Once you get a tune you like, you can name it and save it. Switch to the 3D display for a more detailed look at the sonic possibilities at your fingertips. If it sounds a little intimidating at first, it works flawlessly and creating tunes is dead simple and intuitive after you’ve done your first. Of note: Roush says it and the tech company that helped develop the software are committed to constantly updating the system, and also emphasized that it was designed from the outset with the prevention of hacking in mind.
We had a blast fooling with the system, which we sampled on a on a 2015 Roush Stage 3 Mustang. It took only minutes to come up with a custom “Car and Driver” tune, which we then shared with anyone in earshot of Roush’s suburban Detroit headquarters. In a way, it’s all a bit like making the ultimate mixtape comprised entirely of your car engine’s greatest hits.
Those that find the concept of an tunable exhaust appealing but prefer their interface to be of the physical kind can use a provided console-mounted rotary knob to scroll through the three preprogrammed modes and one previously stored custom tune. Roush tells us the active exhaust setup is available as an option on any 2015 Stage 1, 2, or 3 Mustang, as well as a stand-alone item. Additionally, buyers can piecemeal the system together, purchasing the quad-tip exhaust setup now and adding the active bits later, for example. Likewise, the active valves can be retroactively fit the majority of cars currently equipped with a Roush quad-tip exhaust. Pricing for compatible exhausts varies; for more info, head here.
Here’s an explanation of how it works:
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