Someone in another thread mentioned cars backfiring. It reminded me that a couple of weeks ago I realised that I hadn’t heard a car backfire for many, many, years.
Presumably improvements to ignition systems have stopped this.
Does anyone hear cars backfiring these days?
If it isn’t ignition systems improvement, what’s changed?
My guess would be computer-controlled timing, as opposed to mechanically-controlled timing. It just doesn’t seem to happen any more.
Dunno… couple of hours? Hard engine braking makes a bit of noise in my car…
Also the prevalence of fuel injection rather than carburetors.
Fuel injection and computer controlled ignition together have brought the occurrence of backfires down. My 1979 Dodge truck I’m restoring has neither of these, and can generate a real kaboom of a backfire until the engine warms up.
About 1979-1980; I had a 1978 Honda Accord. That model Honda has made dozens of Worst Cars Ever Made lists; it had a new fangled combustion chamber design couple with an exhaust system that scavenged very inefficiently. The combustion chamber and the exhaust valves became clogged with carbon very early on. Excess back pressure due to the rotten exhaust system caused the piston rings to collapse and the damned thing just went downhill from there on. I preferred a Renault Dauphin I once owned to that Honda.
If the sound of backfiring makes you nostalgic, just rent a golf cart at a less-expensive golf course. 
I had one backfire on me a couple of times just a few days ago.
My wife’s car backfired earlier this year. It hadn’t been started in about three weeks, and it did something funny when we did start it up, so we took it in to the mechanic.
While at the mechanic’s, they started it up and it backfired. Apparently, it scared the hell out of everyone in the shop at 7 AM. But I didn’t hear it myself.
CVCC? I had one of those in a 1980 Accord. I don’t remember it as rotten - I kept it for seven years, and the guy I sold the thing to ran it at least into the 1990s when I last saw him. The only thing related to what you said that I remember was a very precise cold weather starting procedure, due to that engine design. If you didn’t follow it, the plugs got fouled, as I found out the first winter I had it in Denver. The Honda dealer was handing out sheets with the starting procedure for everybody that was doing it wrong, and also telling you to take the plugs out, bake them at low heat in the oven for an hour or so, put them back in, and THEN start the car the right way in cold weather. Follow the directions to the letter, and it didn’t happen.
When I was a kid, I remember being able to make cars backfire by turning off the ignition for a few seconds with the car in gear, then turning it back on to get a loud shotgun blast out the exhaust. Worked best if you were going downhill, so as to suck lots of unburned fuel into the exhaust pipe before turning it back on. And if your father didn’t catch you doing it to to the family car. Probably not the greatest thing in the world for the exhaust system. Many years later, I remember trying it with a more modern car, telling myself I was an idiot, and I was going to wind up springing for a new catalytic converter. Nothing happened, except maybe a tiny little “poot”. Ah, fuel injection … it’s off, no gas gets injected.
Uncle Buck
I’ve never heard one in my life.
This is yet another sad commentary on today’s youth and the lack of awareness of what we had to live with in days of yore. Lot’s of people think they grew up in a crime-ridden neighborhood in the 70’s when it just turns out that people down the street had crappy cars that backfired all the time.
I can’t think of any backfiring I have heard in cars newer than 1990 or so but I have heard it from some of the older cars and tricked out motorcycles still around.
It never occurred to me that this is such a rare occurrence. I would say several times a week. But I live on the Southwest Side of Chicago, where there’s still a good number of older cars drag racing along an industrial section of the neighborhood.
I was just thinking of this.
Crazy.
Once in my life, about two years ago when my alternator went out.
There is a guy a few doors down with an ancient truck.
I hear it most mornings. Oh well, at least the thing seems to run. I don’t think I’m much older than the truck in question.
I am right, right? I mean, it is Uncle Buck that has that car that builds up and then backfires, right?
If you’re nostalgic for it, come to Panama. Some of the buses here sound like an artillery engagement.
I hear it all the time; guys who have crappy tuners with badly modified exhausts and that are running too rich from being chipped or whatever will have the occasional backfire. And around here, there are a lot of crappy tuners.