As mentioned, I had an appointment last Saturday to have a custom exhaust system fitted to the car. Sadly all has not gone smoothly, hence no report. I’m still waiting to see what the fitters suggest, so for now they’ll remain nameless, but here’s the update:

Firstly, the old Scorpion system was removed. The source of the vibrating noise was clear to see: the middle box was cracked along its width.

Two silencers had been ordered. The middle one was offered up on a stand, measurements were taken, and pipes bent and cut to fit.

The back box was made up with 3″ flared tailpipes (the same size as the outgoing Scorpion pipes).

The process took six hours. The company involved put in unquestionable effort, and looked after me and the car really well, with this final result:

I can best relay my concerns with the email I sent on Monday:

“Firstly, I cannot express enough my gratitude to ***** and ***** for their time and effort to look after me on Saturday. I appreciate that it took their entire day, and I can’t award any less than 10 out of 10 for customer service: you looked after both me and my car excellently. I’m extremely impressed by the quality of the materials used, and I’m simply in awe of *****’s pipe bending and welding skills; I didn’t get bored watching him weave his magic all day.

“There is however, I’m afraid to say, one problem. I’ve considered this for some time, and I’m keen to impress that I really am grateful for your efforts, but it would be dishonest of me to say and write to others that the system is perfect, because sadly I can’t say I’m 100% happy with it, for it’s simply too loud. While it sounds nice and meaty and impressive, it attracts far too much attention around town (especially police), and after an hour on the motorway it’d given me quite a headache. Having consulted others, it’s also likely that it’ll fail noise tests at some tracks and certainly at the Nurburgring, which ultimately means that I can’t leave it as it is.

“I was therefore wondering if there’s anything you can do to substantially reduce the amount of noise the system makes, maybe by replacing one or both silencers? I really don’t want to make any more work for you, but equally I’m a bit stuck with this current system!

“Any help or advice you can offer would be much appreciated. ”

Futhermore, I drove the car to London and back today. The exhaust is most embarrassing, but perhaps more annoying there’s a slight leak where the new system joins the old. I await news…