I wanted to put a custom sports exhaust system on the car, but it would have involved transporting the chassis on a trailer to ARO Exhausts in Buckingham (http://aroexhausts.co.uk/) once it was assembled for them to make the exhaust and then trailering it back again. Due to time constraints, this just couldn't be done, so we fitted a full Phoenix stainless steel 6-3-1 branch sports exhaust manifold and system to the car with a view to taking it up to ARO exhausts to replace the system once the rebuild was complete.

I wanted something a little different from the standard options currently available, which I explained to Ant at ARO when I took the car up for a first look at what was possible. After exploring a number of options, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the physical constraints of the underside of the vehicle would mean that there were very limited choices, and if I were to try something a little 'left-field' then it might well look completely inappropriate for the vehicle, and/or sound ridiculously loud. We came to the conclusion that the best approach would be leave the existing single-bore Phoenix system on the vehicle, but re-align it so that it fitted better and add a small modification to the rear pipe that I got from Bill's blog when he did Patience… that is, to redirect the exhaust fumes downwards rather than have them exiting the end of the exhaust pipe by welding a deflector plate on the inside of the pipe. This should stop the fumes from swirling up back into the cabin, and also reduce the soot build-up on the rear panel now that is was painted in body colour rather than the standard matt black finish.

Deflector plate in the rear pipe