BACKPRESSURE = TORQUE?
An old hot-rodder's tall tale: Engines need some backpressure to work properly and make torque. That is not true. What engines need is low backpressure, but high exhaust stream velocity. A fast-moving but free-flowing gas column in the exhaust helps create a rarefaction or a negative pressure wave behind the exhaust valve as it opens. This vacuum helps scavenge the cylinder of exhaust gas faster and more thoroughly with less pumping losses. An exhaust pipe that is too big in diameter has low backpressure but lower velocity. The low velocity reduces the effectiveness of this scavenging effect, which has the greatest impact on low-end torque.

Low backpressure and high exhaust stream velocity can be achieved by running straight-through free-flowing mufflers and small pipe diameters. The only two exceptions to this are turbocharged engines and engines optimized for large amounts of nitrous oxide. Both of these devices vastly increase the exhaust gas volume and simply need larger pipes to get rid of it all.

Some stock mufflers and exhaust systems have up to 18psi of choking, power-robbing backpressure. In direct contrast, a well-designed, high-performance street exhaust system typically has about 2 to 6 psi of backpressure. For an interesting comparison, an un-muffled straight pipe on a real racecar usually has 1 to 3 psi of backpressure.