[Phil Hill]

Hi everyone and happy new year to you all.

Right straight to the point, I attended a lecture a couple of years ago about the Aston Martin V12 Vantage. In the presentation the guy presented the fact that the exhaust silencer at the back of the car (which was very similar in general arrangement to the SVX) has a by-pass valve system.

This means at idle and low RPM the valve opens to allow exhaust gases to by-pass the silencer via a straight through pipe incorporated into the silencer box so the nice burble of the V12 idle can be heard with minimal silencing, the valve closes again off idle RPM for noise control, then at high to full engine revs the valve opens to the by-pass pipe again for the full aural pleasure of the V12 at high RPM to be enjoyed.

With the advent of people "Cracking the code" in engine ecu's and such, or the advent of RPM activated switches, the fact that all the SVX's exhausts are getting to the end of life, and that various perhaps misguided efforts at re-engineering the exhaust system on the SVX (like removing the resonator which isn't actually there for silencing but to enhance torque) I wondered if anyone had thought of a similar system for the SVX.

I can't find a diagram of the Aston Martin system, obviously, but I'll see if I can draw one.

Treat this as the misguided ramblings of an engineering idiot if you will, or perhaps it will stimulate some thought !!

Phil.