I think the idea is so we're not all breathing in the fumes! When a car has a failing emissions system, sometimes you can smell them from literally a mile down the road!

 

So, exhaust round 3 or 4, I'm not sure.

Cats on the floor. Should be interesting getting these guys up in the hole. Looks like the 5.0 had the up stream o2 in the manifold and the downstream one further away from the cat. I wonder if that's to allow the processed gasses to mix for a better signal or cool for longer o2 life. On the manifold side I may cut the top off of the cats so I can orient them to fit the chassis better. I don't want a lot of pipe upstream but will need some.


The H part of the cat pipe has this neat stainless sprung connection. It also has four 45' bend that I'm probably going to use to get the new cats fitted.


I'm going to mount it behind the differential where hopefully it'll calm down the pulses hitting the resonators and maybe help tame the drone.


Only hiccup so far was getting on of the downstream o2's out. Needed heat and lube to help free it up and of course the pipe dropped down and reminded my fore arm that it was hot. Good times and perfect weather to be under a car.

 

So today pretty much sucked. I bet I climbed in and out from under the car one hundred times. Every damn thing hurts this evening. I don't think I've ever suffered so much for such a simple job. Just cut the little cats off and fit in the bigger ones. Sure...

The only picture of today's success. Nothing went well, everything fought between fitment and pipe sizing. I ended up cutting apart the 5.0 cats to reorient the inlet side. For some odd reason when Ford drew these up the inlet side has two walls with insulation between them. So once cut free both caps went separate ways and the insulation suffered. I was eventually able to get them mocked up. Call it a dozen times between the car and saw or sander, then tacked, then if happy welded. Now multiply that for each joint and add another dozen for general pain and suffering. I haven't even made the o2 fittings yet.


I started with the drivers since it's more difficult, gave that up and did the easy side first. Spent the rest of the day piecing together the pipes to get something that should work out well in the morning. I actually cut the welds away from the 2nd cat and the adapter fittings so I can mock my own pipe up. I got one joint done before shutting down for the night. The passenger side cat tucked up and fit well. I was able to keep it centered in the space and it even looks good. I should be able to mount the down stream o2 on the inside of the discharge pipe without too much suffering.

We'll see.

 

OK, I'm going to say I'm officially at least 1/2 way done. Upstream plumbing and o2 bungs are done. Notice from the size difference how much more precise fitment is required to get the o2's positioned where they won't rub or overheat anything up there. What's also interesting is the pipe goes from 2.25" at the manifold to 2.5" at the cats. On the Mustang it then necked back down to 2.25" 12" behind the cats and further bumped back up to 2.5" at the 'H' connection. I wonder if it was tuning, sound control, or emissions constraints that went into getting that pipe designed?





So, once lunch is done I'll get them back up and sort out the rest of the down pipes by having the mid pipe hanging in position. I have a 2.5-2.25" transition and should be able to use the old pipe for the rest. Oh yeah, down stream o2 bungs too.

 

Given your interests in automotive fabrication, and may I say advancing age, you would do well to invest in an auto lift for your garage. You could probably get a bunch of us, your loyal readers, to pay for it.

 

Nah, believe it or not, it's much easier on me laying down vs. working with hands over head while scrunched down. Few lifts are tall person friendly. I've done it both ways and the real benefit of not having a lift is not having the lift in the way all the time.

Plus the greatest thing about not having a lift is no one wants to use it.

 

This is the reason I didn't buy a truck and am grateful my brother has a truck. And why I am fond of my college buddies who have bought boats.

 

Further along... It should even fit. I was mistaken, the big pipe at the cats is 2.75" which is crazy big compared to the 2.25" stuff which is slightly larger than the stock 60 mm pipe. That's a whole lot of cutting and fitting to connect the dots. I hope the results are worth it.

 

Well, it's back together but still on the stand. Fired it up and the tone is slightly more subdued with the new cats. I ran out of steam before doing the rear cross over. Free rev'd the tone has a lot less pulsing to it so hopefully it'll drone less. I did notice that the old passenger side cat was hard on the floor so I can't imagine that helped things before. New setup has at least 1/4" clearance to the heat shield and as said before, the walls of the cats are insulated. Now to drop it, get a bath and see if it's better on the road. I'm sore.

And yes, the dog is happy to have his blanket back.

 

What are you going to do with all your spare time once this car is finished?

 

What is this mythical 'spare time' you speak of?

 

So, bathed the car and took it for a ride long enough to blow dry it. Kind of mixed feelings. It's oh so much quieter but still has a 2k drone on the interstate. It's not mind numbing as before but still there and bad enough pulling a hill at speed. Pulls at least as hard as before if not harder (does that make sense) and has a burble tone that's really an order of magnitude quieter than with the 200 cell cats. Overall though, two thumbs up. I just pulled the battery cables to reset the CEL since my programmer can't clear it. Tomorrow I plan on taking it to Reading PA for the WWII weekend / air show. Should be an interesting run.

 

Been following your thread with great interest. I modified the exhaust on mine and have no drone. Changes are 200 cell cats, both resonators deleted and replaced with X-pipe and larger exhaust tips/outlets on stock XKR back box. You've put a whole lot of time into chasing this exhaust drone, perhaps it is time to go with the OEM muffler? They pop up in various places from time to time.

 

Yep, it's in the mufflers. I needed to chase the cats for the CEL, P0480 if memory serves so this wasn't lost time. I do like how much more sophisticated the car sounds. Just wish it was a bit louder now. Never happy.

 

So, today the car made a 240 mile run up to Reading PA and back for the WWII weekend event. CEL popped up about 3/4 of the way there. While cruising at a constant speed. I think I need to get an OBDii blue tooth adapter and see what's going on live. Maybe an o2 issue or tune based. In a way I'm disappointed that the cats didn't fix it but they aren't hiding the problem either. I did notice that when I'm on it hard that the car blow brownish grey smoke like it's running rich. My '93 would do a puff of similar colored stuff when I'd shift. Otherwise the car ran without issue.

The Ford's at Carlisle show was today as well so we passed a bunch of Mustangs both coming and going and the XKR got a lot of looks from guys in newer Mustangs. It was kind of funny watching the rubber neck from the other direction.

 

Borrowed a shops spare Snap-On Solex scanner today since I'm off and it's raining again. They only had the S44 key and not the S43 which accesses the TPMS and body modules. The S44 got me into the ECU, Trans, HVAC and instrument cluster. Car had a ton of codes that I was able to clear out. The ECU codes are P0139 and P0159 which are lazy / slow responding downstream o2's which makes sense since they are a couple inches back from the o2's. At least it didn't flag P0480, inefficient cats.

It also had a P0128 coolant temp below spec and P0050 Cold start timing performance codes. Looking at the data everything is responding correctly. The water temp is 199`F and the o2's were responding. Fuel trim was +3% long term. The car did get 24 mpg running up to Reading and back.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to drag my dad's boat to the bay which makes for a very long day.

 

The P0128 says its time for a thermostat change. The car isn't getting up to operating temperature fast enough.
The thermostat housing on your XKR is metal, which is good, but if it uses a similar thermostat as the one in my XK, the rubber gasket in there can deform and block the thermostat from closing completely. That's what happened on mine.

 

Do these cars have an electric element in the HVAC for heat? I ask that because I'll get heat within a minute of starting the car on a normal cooler morning. We just fought with my son's LS 3.9l Jag having the same problem. His was a cracked plastic fitting under the TB.

 

This afternoons project was to get some part numbers for the passenger side mirror and see if I could sort out the remote motors since the mirror flops around. The mirror face is held on by spring pressure. Simplest way to remove it was to force it to the outside and pull on the edge. It disengaged from the clip and then I was able to pop it off the inside. Pretty simple.

Once off here's what I got. One of the pivot pins was popped out on the movement carriage.


So I used a T10 torx to loosen the three mounting bolts and this gave enough freedon of movement to pop the pin back in place. Pretty simple.


So, while it was apart I popped a pic of the part numbers. This mirror unit has both heated defrost and electrochromatic auto darkening. Mine has a permanent gold tint and fog in the center top. Now I just need a mirror to get it back to functioning correctly.

 

I was afraid I was going to need to put a new passenger mirror on my ride after a messy mishap last weekend. I had my daughter out for a drive with the top down, windows up and a large blackbird picked an inopportune time to cross the highway. The blackbird shot across the windscreen - barely clearing it - and made very solid contact with the passenger side mirror. At 65 mph. That bird literally EXPLODED all over the passenger window.

My 22 year old daughter was very, very grateful we had the window up. It was pretty gruesome. Once the utterances subsided, she then proceeded to do what every 22 year old female does: posted pics of the mess to social media.

The good news is the mirror was intact and suffered one minor blemish - not even a scratch - on the paint. Must have hit a soft spot, or at that speed, they're all soft spots. I'll buff that out this weekend and it will be as good as new.