Exhaust

The first thing that surprised me about my GT3 was how quiet the exhaust is. For the past 18 months of ownership, I've often thought about replacing the stock unit with something a little more in tune with the car's looks. Also, the standard exhaust is made of mild steel, is very heavy and suffers from cracking around the entry and exit pipes.

Taking advantage of my car being off the road during December 2000 through to January 2001, I asked a local exhaust company to fabricate my own design in Stainless-Steel.

The Original

Here is a picture of what an original GT3 exhaust looks like.

I've already cut-off the exit pipe and the 180 degree coupling pipe. The GT3 exhaust is very heavily constructed as two, straight-through silencers. Because the exhaust gases pass through a turbo and then a catalyst, this exhaust is almost embarrassingly quiet! People comment that the Esprit looks fast but it sounds like a bit of a rattle.

P.S. Believe it or not, this silencer is only 6 months old. Mild-steel construction, prone to cracking around the welds and an appetite for rust.....

The Prototype

Before I took the plunge and had another exhaust made, I wanted to be sure of the noise level from different combinations of silencer. Some people have just fitted a pipe to the end of the catalyst but I think that'll be too loud. What I don't want is a car that sounds too "boy-racer" like but, however, I do want a car that sounds civilised and sounds like it looks.

The prototype was born! I hack-sawed the exit and coupling pipes off and then welded a new end-piece to the exit of the first silencer. Therefore, this has half the silencing as the original system.

One problem was that the exit is at the wrong side compared to the original configuration; this meant that I had to remove the rear-valance. Some extra brackets were needed to re-mount it.

Running the car with this configuration of silencer was interesting; it has a quiet, deep throbbing sound when it idles with no noticeable increase in noise level when you rev the engine. The exhaust springs into life once the engine is loaded up.... nice! But it's still too quiet in my opinion...!

The New Exhaust

I drew up a new design for my new exhaust. For looks, I used a smaller but full length, straight-through silencer. However, a baffle was installed in the middle of the silencer section with only the half-section nearest to the catalyst being made of perforated pipe. The exit half-section is solid pipe all the way to the exit. This has the effect of shorting the effective silencer and also providing a longer outlet pipe to alter the tone. The inlet of the silencer is fitted with strengthening braces to prevent cracking.

The exhaust was constructed by a local company in 2.5" stainless-steel tube.

Even my cat, Sam, was impressed with the construction!

The entry-flange was a reasonable fit to the catalyst:

It was slightly out but loosening the turbo bolts at the exit was enough to lift the catalyst slightly by about 5mm. This is a slight improvement as it distances it away from the shock-absorber adjuster.

This is how it looks on the car without the rear valance fitted.

Videos and Recordings

Check-out my videos that I've took of the car from the previous page!

If you're lazy - Click-Here!

Page created by: mail@andywhittaker.com
Changes last made on: 18 May 2002 16:19 -0400