Tail pipe is sooty black. Is this normal?

Boydie

 

which car, Boydie, the 08 panel or your 09 SS? the could be some carbon built up in the SS as it sat for awhile!

 

Vehicles using unleaded fuel always have sooty black tail pipes. It is the nature of the fuel (no lead).

Additionally, if the vehicle is direct injected it will have more soot. Again, the nature of the "beast".

BUT, you could have a problem. You need to determine if the amount of residue is normal.

 

If it's the SS, soot seems to be the norm for them. Not sure of the specs, but they seem to be factory tuned a little rich for the idle parameters and no load situations.
Mine has always sooted up the tailup both stock and after the GMTU. Plus it still soots up with my aftermarket muffler.
Could also be that the straight-through SS muffler does not catch the soot internally like a regular HHR muffler.
And, fwiw, the SS came with a different muffler for the 5 speeds and the automatic trans.

 

It only indicates a problem if you also have puddles of water under the tailpipe after you drive it some then idle for a while, and experience disappearing coolant. That would lead to looking for a bad head gasket.

 

turbo cars in general end up with soot, usually on the bumper, I think the design of the exhaust tip helps keep the bumper clean on the SS's

 

Turbo dust...........Clean it off and see it return in 5 minutes..

 

Because of the turbo, when the exhaust hits the downtube there is rapid cooling of the gases,, therefore they don't fully burn off leaving soot...combination of pressure drop and cooling involved..normal ops....no car (except a highly modified one) reaches 100% burn efficiency, therfore there will always be unburned gasses out the tail pipe, thus is why there are cats, 02 sensors,,unleaded gas and all the other bells and whistles of which some are just bandaids. Maybe Detroit needs to work in a nascar garage and learn how they achieved 110%......