Exhausting Weekend

Once again it’s been a while since I posted any news – so what’s been happening?

Well – nothing sufficiently exciting to warrant a post obviously - but there are things afoot.

I’ve been looking for some time at extending the exhaust to the back of the car, getting past the wheel is the tricky part, but I think I have a route now after a lot of hours on the computer model, then of course I agonised for ages over the tail-pipe design. But again I think I have something. Not the cheapest or the lightest solutions you’ll be amazed to hear, but I like the look of it.

In the mean time the “battle Bus” Zafira had got a little more noisy. I’ve had “rear exhaust badly corroded” comments on the last FIVE MoT forms, but if it wasn’t leaking .........

So with the slight increase in noise & change in exhaust note I thought it had finally gone & put the back of the car on ramps & climbed underneath. I was right, the back box had gone – entirely. Can’t say when it came off & I hope it didn’t hit the car behind me whenever it was. Never heard a thump or a clang.

It won't have the extra silencer shown here.

But back at the Fury, I contacted the Company that made the exhaust manifold (allegedly – I bought it second hand) for a quote, it came back at “£1000 because there’s a lot of work fitting it in such a tight area” – well I guess I’ll be finding out how much work it is then. I took off the side pod & the tail pipe, I retrieved a Westfield ZEi exhaust that’s been in “storage” on the shed roof for at least five years & set to work. One of the bends was a little crushed, but I sorted that to an acceptable standard with a little vice work, & set to with hacksaw & file. After maybe 2 hours I had all the tight area sorted & am just waiting for some mandrel bends to arrive in the post to finish it off. My welding is of course well up to it’s usual standard (utter crap) but good enough for an exhaust. I’ll tack weld the tail pipes together & get them professionally welded as they’ll be visible from the outside.

Then it was time to heal the 3” hole in the side pod. I chamfered off the edge of the hole on the outside, then cut some acetate sheet a little larger than the hole & duct-taped it on (to keep the outer profile), then made up some gel coat / resin / catalyst mix & prodded some surfacing tissue & chopped strand mat on the inside, a much larger piece of mat to hover the whole area & when cured took off the acetate, I’ll leave it to cure fully, but so far the shape is looking better than I’d hoped. The colour match isn’t brilliant, so I may need a sticker!

As well as all that I’ve ordered a new load of glass fluff for the silencer, so the car should be kinder to the neighbours in the future & as an added bonus, because the sound will be coming out the back, not the side it shouldn’t set off my wife’s car alarm when I drive past.

Here's the fluff that came out

Also in the big box of shiny things will be a new speedo sender which attaches to the original speedo output on the gearbox. Hopefully this will work & I can get rid of the magnet wheel & sensor on the prop-shaft which has never worked well & often not worked at all (sigh).