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Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:27 am

I decided to return to a stock muffler on my ’70 KG and found quite a few threads here on the quality differences among the various brands available, particularly with respect to fit. Consensus seems to be that the Danish brand Dansk is not as good and does not fit as well as the German brands Ernst or Leistritz or Eberspacher. Okay, so should be simple enough to order up one of these German brands from one of the vendors, right? Wrong. It appears that the German brands are no longer available from anybody. Wolfsburg West used to sell Ernst but they now say the OEM stock muffler they carry is Jopex (Dansk). Everybody else also seems to carry only Jopex/Dansk as their premium or OEM brand or shows German as “Out of Stock”. I found an EMPI-branded stock muffler that says “Euro-made” but don’t know anything about it and it might be Dansk too. Other options are Bosal or Brazil made. So am I right in concluding that the German brands are not available and so try my luck with the Dansk? Any recent experience with Dansk or other stock mufflers and fit issues?

Wed Dec 03, 2014 11:22 am

Just got a Jopex brand muffler on my new turnkey and it fit really well. About three years ago I put one (Dansk, same company but whatever) on my old engine and the fit was not-so-good, needed a lot of tweeking, especially the fresh air junctions. Some have said you can take those junction tins off an old german muffler if they are still ok and use them on the Danish mufflers for better results. I ended up using aluminum tape along with the stock muffler clamp to seal up the gap on that one sos I could get all the hot air I could out of it.
It probably depends on the batch, or whether or not the muffler you get was at the bottom of the container with the weight of a thousand identical mufflers on top of it, slightly bending things here and there.
Dansk/Jopex was the OEM supplier of mufflers/heater boxes to VW back in the day, so they are the best route to go now. I even have some Jopex heater boxes with VW stamped into them, probably what you got when you went to the dealership for parts back when.
I hear the Brazilian ones are cheap, loud and rot out quicker, especially Kadron.

One other thing to note is that the paint on a Dansk muffler burns off in days, so if you really wanna protect it ceramic coating or sandblast/ home ceramic with VHT Flameproof is reccommended.

Hope this helps.

Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:45 pm

I have a NOS Leistritz from 1989, I think. PM me if you are interested. I am no longer going to use it. Thanks, Casey

Wed Dec 03, 2014 3:15 pm

I've never had any issues with Dansk mufflers. Seem to last as long as German did. If you want to get fancy CIP1 sells ceramic coated Dansks's

Sat Oct 31, 2015 10:08 am

Jump ahead to August, 2015. Has Dansk recently changed the paint on its mufflers??????

I just bought a Type-1 Dansk muffler from AutohausAZ in Arizona. It was a good online price. I read about the crappy primer that instantly burns off Dansk mufflers. So I planned to strip the primer off and give the new muffler a ceramic coating.

When the muffler arrived, I was impressed by its silver paint--not grey like I expected. The paint was semi-gloss, thick, and sort of metallic. It looked great. What a shame, I thought, to strip it. But strip it I did, or at least tried to. First I used a braided wire wheel on an angle grinder. That hardly worked (!). So I tried burning the paint off with a propane torch. At about 500 degrees the paint liquefied, but didn't really burn until about 700 degrees. So I switched to acetylene. That seemed to take the paint off easily. But when I tried to clean the surface afterward, I realized the torch had only removed about 80%. What remained was hard as nails. Now I have a mess. I hope I can get the muffler clean in a friend's bead-blast cabinet. Oh boy.

I now suspect the paint was, in fact, hi-temp ceramic. I know Cip1 sells ceramic coated Dansk mufflers, but I thought that was something they did themselves. My muffler was shipped directly from Dansk, had the original Dansk sticker, and was cheap. It wasn't advertised as anything special.

DOES ANYONE KNOW ABOUT NEW DANSK MUFFLERS???

Thanks!

Sat Oct 31, 2015 3:42 pm

page 18 of my build has my experience with mufflers, the one I bought from CIP1 was not even a close fit, the one from aircooled.net fit fine.

Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:53 pm

here's my experience with dansk mufflers:

I posted a complaint about this ill-fitting crap and got flamed for it, with folks saying that I just needed to "tweak" it to make it fit- LOL no amount of tweaking is gonna fix that. Went back to my stock muffler and no problems at all.

Sat Oct 31, 2015 7:15 pm

Thanks TX-73 and sb001 for your responses.

Did either of you have any notable experience, one way or the other, about the paint on new Dansk mufflers? Did it seem like ceramic? Or did it just burn off?

TX-73, was your CIP1 or Aircooled.net muffler made by Dansk?

Sb001, who made the stock muffler you went back to? I thought Dansk was OEM, which I thought was the same as stock.

Thanks

Sat Oct 31, 2015 9:56 pm

The paint will burn off leaving a kind of pinkish colored tint to it. While the paint looks great when the muffler is new, it's an illusion. It will be gone after a few miles.

Sat Oct 31, 2015 10:03 pm

oldovaldriver wrote:

Sb001, who made the stock muffler you went back to? I thought Dansk was OEM, which I thought was the same as stock.

Thanks

Dansk is not OEM as far as I can tell- it is a Danish brand (as mentioned earlier it is the same company as Jopex which explains the "JP/Dansk" sticker on mine when it arrived.) Vendors can say OEM all they want, whatever.
I have no idea who actually made my stock muffler, it's decades old and it has the VW emblem and part # engraved in it and the heat riser tube is on the correct (left hand) side instead of the right side like the Dansk had it. I was only going to replace it because it had surface rust on it, but after deciding to stick with it I just sprayed it with rust converter and painted it.

Sat Oct 31, 2015 10:34 pm

Dansk and Jopex did not even exist when our aircooled vehicles were being made, so of course they are not OEM. They are strictly aftermarket part providers (as far as
aircooled VW's go), and rather shoddy parts they are too. It's been that way for a long, long time and it appears that's how they choose to do business.

Check out this old forum topic concerning Dansk exhaust parts for late bays: http://www.aircooledvwsa.co.za/viewtopic.php?t=12783

Sun Nov 01, 2015 6:10 am

I don't know if Dansk is using a different kind of paint, as I am still running a Leistritz muffler. The paint burned off pretty quickly.

JP Group and Leistritz were both founded in 1975, so neither of them could have been the OEM for the muffler on my 1973 Super. Some online shops make a distinction between "genuine" factory parts, "OE" parts made by one of the original manufacturers of that part for that car, and "OEM" parts from a company that manufactures original equipment for somebody. Specialist shops usually reserve OEM for parts made by an original manufacturer for that car, although most production has moved out of Germany. Some shops say "OE quality", which only means that they generally like a reproduction part. These terms can be misleading. For example, Meyle is an aftermarket manufacturer, and JP Group may qualify as an OEM for some car company, but I wouldn't rate JP Group over Meyle.

JP Group has a number of brands, and you will commonly see Dansk, Jopex, Classic Aircooled, and Mechanex in VW circles. Overall, I consider them to be mid-grade brands, better than Brazilian or Chinese reproductions but not as good as OE. I haven't seen a Bosal muffler to compare it.

One of these days, I'd like to try this stainless JP Group muffler:

http://www.paruzzi.com/webstore/?full=1&zoeknl=1&zoektrefwoord=6051

Empi distributes some JP Group mufflers with ceramic coating. CIP1 sells them.

Sun Nov 01, 2015 8:18 am

If I remember right the one that fit was Jopex. I've not run the engine enough to burn off the paint, so I don't know what that end result will be. My comments were based only on my experience with a couple mufflers - as you can see there are more knowledgeable postings here.. But for me it fit and worked trying to get to that first start up :)

Sun Nov 01, 2015 10:57 am

The Jopex mufflers are the only ones being sold right now for type 1 powered buses. The quality of the main muffler is good. Where it falls short is the fresh air ducts that hook up to the heater boxes. They are too short and at slightly the wrong angle. It makes it difficult to hook them up correctly with out bending and tweaking those ducts.

Sun Nov 01, 2015 3:03 pm

http://www.leistritz.com/production/en/history.html

According to that page, Leistriz began producing mufflers for the VW Beetle in April, 1975. The company Leistriz AG was founded in 1905. I've seen many photos of Leistriz mufflers with the VW logo and part no. on them (and probably used a few of them myself). That would certainly make Leistriz an OEM supplier of the mufflers.

Sun Nov 01, 2015 4:05 pm

well if dansk was is or ever has been an OEM supplier of beetle mufflers then their tooling must have gotten pretty effed up over the years cause their fitting sucks now. Bottom line period.

kreemoweet wrote: http://www.leistritz.com/production/en/history.html

According to that page, Leistriz began producing mufflers for the VW Beetle in April, 1975. The company Leistriz AG was founded in 1905. I've seen many photos of Leistriz mufflers with the VW logo and part no. on them (and probably used a few of them myself). That would certainly make Leistriz an OEM supplier of the mufflers.

Since both dansk and leistritz are bragging about 1975 I'd like to know who made mufflers for VW before then. That's what mine is.

Sun Nov 01, 2015 9:38 pm

Sorry, apparently the Leistritz Group includes a number of companies. Leistritz Produktionstechnik, the one that made Beetle mufflers, dates back to 1975. Until recently, shops were selling the German Ernst brand, but I don't know if it was an OEM. I have seen it described as a stock replacement.

Mon Nov 02, 2015 6:03 am

oldovaldriver: Sucks, you stripped a ceramic coated exhaust.
weep-wamp. :cry:
get some VHT flameproof exhaust paint and go over what you took down to metal. bake it if you can otherwise you will have to follow the can instructions to cure it on the car.
How much is AutohauzAZ getting for the ceramic coated ones? I'd jump and buy one. The regular ones are about $120

For those so inclined here is an article on how to make a Dansk muffler "work" or "fit" or "operate correctly" :
http://haysvwrepair.com/how-to-make-a-crappy-dansk...ything-it/

For what it's worth the rebuilt engine I installed last year got brand new Dansk heater boxes and a Jopex muffler. Bolted right up and fit way better than the pics above. There was a slight skewing where the junction tin meets the heater box but tightening the muffler clamp down pretty much fixed that. This muffler had "jopex" etched into the rear between the tip outlets. My older Dansk muffler I took off had a huge gap in the drivers side, I used aluminum tape to seal it up. That one did not have anything etched into it as far as brand name, so maybe thier quality has improved to the point that they are willing to put their name on it now! :lol:

As far as the OEM thing is concerned, I bought some heater boxes off a guy about 3-4 years ago that came out of his old stash of parts. They had VW emblems stamped into the tin. Guess what? Jopex sticker on them. They were cheap and didn't have heat sinks in them either, just a J-pipe. So...that is what you got when you went to the dealership parts counter back in the day. Original. Equipment. Manufacturer.
Jopex also sells the best quality heater channels you can buy for the fatchicks. there is a whole thread devoted to the differences. Klokkerholm is garbage.
They are not a terrible compnay.

Tue Nov 03, 2015 12:07 am

JP Group (Dansk or Jopex) makes heavy-weight heater boxes with internal fins and light-weight heater boxes without them. ACN has a good description of the difference. I didn't know that the light-weight version used to be available through VW as well.

http://vwparts.aircooled.net/Heat-Exchanger-Heater-Box-Left-043-255-107H-p/043-255-107h.htm

http://vwparts.aircooled.net/Heat-Exchanger-Heater-Box-Left-043-255-107H-p/043-255-107hec.htm

See also:

http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=VWC%2D043%2D255%2D107%2DD

JP Group is a manufacturer but also a wholesaler with an extensive air-cooled VW catalog, including many items that they don't make. For example, Simyi makes the cheaper front quarter panels for Super Beetles, but the parts arrive with a JP Group sticker on the box. The much more expensive version comes from Memminger, which also makes very high quality heater channels and bumpers.

http://www.feine-cabrios.de/cms/front_content.php?idart=704&lang=3

Car companies often use multiple OEMs for the same part at any one time, and they may change OEMs over the years. They also continue to sell OE parts for years after they stop selling the car. One or more of the companies that started making Beetle mufflers after 1975 may be an OEM, even if it wasn't an OEM for that part in the 60s and early 70s. For example, I have pulled VW-stamped worn-out windshield washer jets made by Hella and VDO off of 1973 Super Beetles, but people are more familiar with SWF, which continued to make that part for longer.

At the risk of getting off topic, Jopex/Dansk (Denmark) and Bosal (U.S.) are the decent options for stock mufflers right now. They should fit the cylinder heads just fine, and most of the complaints focus on the fit to the heater boxes, which you can work around. In the Danish version, ceramic-coated and stainless options are available, but I have only seen the stainless version in Europe.

http://www.bughaus.com/heat9.htm

Sat Nov 14, 2015 4:15 pm

ROCKOROD71:

I think you are right I stripped a ceramic coated muffler. :cry: But I'm curious; how do you know? I didn't save the Dansk label when I stripped it. Is there a different part number for ceramic? The price was under $100. Maybe it was shipped by mistake or the regular was out of stock. Anyway it's a bummer now for me, but I'm still curious what the situation is.

Thanks, Paul