My favorite of all the 3 series.

 

Pulling the fuse works.
I picked up a V6-S Vert. in Stratus Grey on Thursday. It did not have the exhaust button option. When I drove it home from the dealership, I was dissapointed at how tame and subdued the exhaust sounded.

After researching the forums and finding this thread, I decided to pull the fuse and see what would happen.
lifting the carpet was no problem and I soon saw a rectangular cut out in the passenger footwell, centered, where it begins to incline upwards towards the front of the car.
I pried my fingers under a corner and began to pull up gently. The cover started snapping open corner by corner exposing the fuse box. After comparing it to the owners manual I realized the diagram is upside down compared to the actual orientation of the fuse box in the footwell.

Upon looking closer I also noticed the fuses were labeled on the actual box and fuse F43 was clearly marked. I used a small needle nose plier to gently pull the fuse and stored it inside my owners manual book.

I then took the car for a drive and immediately noticed a deeper more resonant tone to the exhaust in the lower gears when accelerating, while the attitude was more aggressive and alive in higher gears. She roared, popped and gurgled between shifts and also when I let off the pedal.

Although the vibe of the exhaust now has more perceived attitude, I find that it correlates perfectly with pedal attitude.. meaning when I'm driving calmly the tone is singing, pitched,and audible yet civilized, but when I thrust the pedal even a bit, the exhaust perfectly represents the acceleration changes.. more acceleration more growl.. stomping on the pedal and the car SCREAMS "get outta the way!"

Thank you guys for sharing this simple hack that makes my purchase 100% the experience and car I was hoping it would be. Leaving the dealership I felt like I compromised.. after pulling the fuse I felt like I got the car I wanted.
PULL YOUR FUSE!

 

It's not F3... it's F43

 

I am a newbie to this site and just took delivery of a V8S F-type last week. I do not have the switch for switchable active exhaust and was wondering if anyone bought the double switch and tried to install it. If so is the car pre-wired for active switchable exhaust and the switch is just omitted at production or if they use an entirely different harness. If the wiring is not there I would consider buying a double switch and jumping it at the 43 fuse terminal block.

 

That absolutely should be do-able. The C6 Z06 had the same open/close valve set-up controlled by a fuse, but there was no switch as a factory option. Someone developed a fused, console switch, and the cable to the fuse box was routed under the carpet and plugged into the fuse box, which controlled opening and closing of the valves. Just like the F-Type, with the fuse removed , the valves were always open, but the switch allowed one to manually open and close the valves just like the factory option.

 

You should read the technical doc posted by OzRisk in his Dropbox on the active exhaust system. Explains in great detail how it works - for example, the solenoid doesn't directly move the valves in the exhaust; those are vacuum-operated. And the switch feeds the 'JaguarDrive Switchpack", which talks to the rest of the car via the CAN bus.
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/f...1/#post1145230


We engineers love stuff like this.

 

So i just bought a 2015 v6 coupe base.
My car does have the fuse f43. I pulled the fuse...
in my driveway....the car does NOT sound any different. So i am assuming that i have the fuse, but not the active pipes? i will take it for a drive later and see if i notice anything else.

BTW... removing the active exhaust in my XKR and adding a new exhaust system, made that car MORE responsive.

but on that car i needed to reset the memory by unplugging the battery for the car to adjust properly to the new exhaust.

Anyone here think that perhaps the 2015 Coupe ftype might have the exhaust?
or is the fuse just there for the hell of it?

 

It's easy enough to determine if you stick your head up under the rear bumper. On the V6, if you have 4 pipes going into the front of your muffler (2 coming out at the rear) you have a switchable exhaust. If only 2 pipes going in the front, you have a regular muffler.

 

You'll also see the actuators for the valves on 2 of the 4 pipes. If you just have 2 plain pipes, you don't have active exhaust.

The other thing you can do is just look at your window sticker. It will be listed as an option on your base car if you have it.

 

On the F-Type V8S does anyone know if the wiring harness contains the wires for the Active Exhaust switch on a non switched car? I am looking to buy the active exhaust switch and install it if that is the case. My car does have active exhause through Dynamic mode.

 

Did you understand what I was saying in post #65 above? If removing the fuse keeps the valves open all the time, which has been confirmed by numerous forum members, then it stands you reason that if you put a switch on that fuse to turn it on and off, it does essentially the same thing as the optional factory switch.

It's not likely the wires are run to the switch location without the switch, but it doesn't matter because you can easily run them from that location under the carpet to the fuse box on the upper passenger sidewall.

As I said, that's what people have been doing on similarly equipped cars for more than a decade. I did it on my C6 Z06, which had active exhaust std, but the feature was not manually switchable at least on 2006 models.

However, it seems to me to be a waste of time. If you want active exhaust on, just drive in dynamic mode. If you want it quiet, just drive in normal mode, and don't bury the pedal with your foot.

 

Not clear to me if it plugs into a harness. In my post above, I mentioned it connects to the 'JaguarDrive Switchpack', which I imagine is right under the panel where the switches are.

 

But, all that could be by-passed by going directly to fuse F43. All it takes is a simple on/off switch for that fused circuit. A simple toggle switch could easily be mounted on the console.

 

Two different (and probably both valid) approaches to the same task. One is the more elegant solution and the other is the straight forward brute force approach. The right approach depends on the personality of the owner. For me it would depend on the application. On a street rod i'd run the wires under the carpet. On an $80+k luxury car, I'd try to make the installation as close to OEM as I could.

 

Actually, no need for running under the carpet. The wires could be run just under the side of the console and under the dash all the way around to the fuse box to the right underside of the glove box. I just checked, and the part of the console that the carpet tucks under is very flexible and a great place to conceal the wires. The wires would be as hidden as all the other OEM wires in those general locations.

As for the switch, the indentation for it is already there, and who knows, you could probably order the OEM switch, and make it work. All you'd need is a little wire and the switchable fuse to plug into the F43 slot. It looks to be an almost identical job and same wire routing we did in the Z06, which took 15-30 minutes.

 

I found a better way than pulling the fuse. There is a valve on each exhaust which switches on whenever you hit the active exhaust button or if you have V8S, turns on during dynamic mode. I just pulled the value to open position on both sides and now active exhaust is permanently on.

 

Yes...breaking the actuator works too.

 

My Dealership mentioned that they had retrofitted switches to customer's cars post delivery for A LOT less than the price for adding it when ordering the car.

They also claim that they can retrofit the glass roof n the coupe...

 

I think it is only a $250 option here (the switch, not the whole exhaust). If I was ordering a car new I would laugh at them and tell them to throw it into the deal. Would be no way I would order the car without the option.

 

Yes. It's always a surprise how badly they appear to do if you actually start to negotiate.

Either the margins are huge, or they aren't used to customers doing anything other than taking what they're given.

I would pay cash to watch a commercial lawyer negotiate the deal on a new car...