This Classic Capri needed a bit of TLC on the exhaust. The owner wanted something a bit more special from the sound and the look. We settled on a mild steel exhaust build as the car doesn’t get much use. We used a simple stainless steel exhaust tip to finish off the look.
The AA Silencers Ford Capri is always getting little developments here and there. Because of a change in championship regulations we have been able to develop a new front splitter and diffuser. The device is designed to control the airflow to the under body section. The splitter harvests pressure ahead of the car to create downforce. Further back air is accelerated to create downforce towards the middle of the car. The new front section controls the air in stages to manage its flow. It is also designed to create vortices along the underbody to seal the floor section and improve downforce. It’s not a perfect design as we have to work within the regulations but it vastly improves lap times. Also fitted are a type of dive plane in front of the rear wheel. Unlike regular dive planes these are mostly to deflect air from the exposed portion of the the tyre.
We’ve done loads of these V6 signums now, and pound for pound they must be the best exhaust to do. The car should have 2 huge boxes at the back but without them the exhaust isn’t loud, it just has a nice growl to it. The back boxes go in the bin and we build some simple pipework with the customers choice of tips. Good looking, great sound and really cheap as there’s not much involved. Everyone’s a winner.
If you’ve never driven a Roller you won’t be able to appreciate how effortlessly luxurious they are. This one was in need of some exhaust work and the owner wanted a full copy of the original exhaust in stainless steel. There are a lot of exhaust boxes in the twin system to keep it silent and the owner couldn’t stretch to having it all replaced, especially as a lot of it was still in remarkably good condition. Instead we built the required parts in mild steel and repaired other parts where required. The final bill was a fraction that of what he’d expected and he wafted off into the sunset, another happy customer.
A regular customer of ours runs this 924 carrera GT in the MSVR championship. He was due to race on a Saturday so opted for a quick test session the Wednesday before. The car arrived with us on Wednesday afternoon with an odd misfire and an hour later we had found a hole in one of the pistons. Not wanting him to miss out on any racing we set about stripping the engine down. By Friday lunchtime the car was running again and he made it to the race on Saturday.
This BMW is a track day regular but as the owners talent has grown he felt the need for more grip. We carried out a full geoetry check but as a lot of the car was standard we could do little more than adjust the tracking. The customer decided to start his upgrades with a set of camber adjustable top mounts. These allowed us to improve the geometry to give him more front end grip. Next on the list is a set of coilovers. One step at a time though
This Ferrari P6 kit came to us for an exhaust build. The engine is from a 355 so I think it’s fair to say it’ll be loud. The problem is the car needs to meet the IVA compliance of 99db and have catalytic converters. the engine needs to breath freely though matched length primary headers and have it’s secondary air system, temperature sensors and lambdas included. The customer also wanted quad tips and a cross over adding, all in the space of about 3 feet and without fouling the closely fitting body. That’ll all add up to a challenge then. We just about squeezed it all in there, the pictures speak for themselves. The finished article looks beautiful but as the car is incomplete we couldn’t check the noise levels. we’ll continue to work with the customer though until his creation is on the road.
Particulate filters are the latest emissions control idea for Diesels. The only major problem is that they have a life span as short as 30,000 miles if a car only gets local town use and the dealers consider their £2000 replacement costs to be an acceptable service charge. Personally we feel that’s a more reasonable cost for a new engine, never mind a wearing component that you’ll need to change again. because of this we do a lot of DPF removals. We bypass the filter assembly and the car then gets sent to have the ECU decoded. the whole lot costs around £200 to £500 and you’ll never need another DPF. You’ll also gain a bit of power as an added extra. This BMW had a full stainless system built for better performance and had the car remapped while he was at it. It produced driveshaft snapping torque figures once finished.
This Astra race car came to us with a misfire that only occurs after half an hour or so of running on the race track. We did a few checks and a bit of digging around. The ECU is a Canems which we use quite a lot of. After running a little data logging and looking at the program it showed the injectors were running beyond their duty cycle and some temperature corrections seemed a little odd. We changed the whole throttle body assembly for one with bigger injectors and the car was remapped to suit. So far it looks as though the problem is solved.
We had a highly strung new shape imprezza in recently that had modified and tweaked to within an inch of it’s life. The only problem was that it’s very expensive stainless exhaust was now a bit too loud. Rather than build a complete new system we designed and built a special slim line box with high temperature wadding to sit in the centre of the exhaust. The performance remains the same but the owner can get off his drive in the morning without the neighbours complaining.
