Hi all,

I bought my first Jag, a 2016 R-Sport XF late last year and love pretty much everything about it. However, the stock exhaust was so quiet I almost couldn't believe it. I made the (mistake) of going to a local custom exhaust shop to have them replace the mufflers (all based on recommendations). With just the mufflers replaced, the drone between ~1300 rpms and 2200 rpms was unbelievably terrible. A second trip to the same shop and helmholtz resonators (pretty sure they didn't do any math on the length) and the problem was significantly reduced but between 1300 rpms and 1500 rpms there is still a terrible done.

I went to a second shop to see what they could do and with no promises and larger helmholtz resonators the problem is slightly better but the drone is still terrible within that range. I'm over a grand in at this point and quite frankly, pretty disappointed. While I knew the (ECU tuned) V6 would never sound like an F-Type, I really wanted that low rpm rumble but I still want the car to be usable at highway speeds.

The only drop-in replacement that I've found online is Quicksilver's exhaust. While very pricey, my assumption was that it was well tuned to avoid any drone. I sent them an email to double check and this was the reply:

We are not sure what drone is? So, quantifying it it for our systems is difficult.
EG - A customer in Hong Kong orders our loudest system for his Aston Martin V8. But.... he cannot drive it more than 40 mph and cruises around at 3000 rpm all the time. It will be horrible. A good Sports exhaust should have a nice range of notes, deep at low speed and rising in note & volume with rpm & throttle position. And then, it has to be used in the right environment, where the driver can allow the revs to rise & fall naturally and produce an enjoyable experience. It sounds like you are going to a lot of trouble to discover just the right sound for you. Pretty hard for us to judge if our systems meets your particular expectation. We can say that we have developed, what we believe is, just the right sound for the XF and, so far, our customers seem to agree.

I hope this makes sense?

The above makes me extremely nervous to drop another ~$2k on the parts, shipping, and install if I'm going to replace one drone with another. Has anyone purchased the Quicksilver exhaust with a 2016+ XF?

 

Following, interested as well.

 

I share the same thing. I have also been eyeing the quicksilver system.

However, I feel a lot of noise is being muffled by the cabin. Some newer cars pipe engine noise in...

I have emailed, or searched for before/after. I was also looking at the Mina intake, and pulley. I have CPO so dont want to push my luck on the pulley.

 

So does your car. It's a mechanical resonator attached to the engine via rubber tubing and pipes the music into the cabin through the firewall from behind the dash. The cabin is so well sealed from noise they needed something for the "sporty" crowd. Funny..... I blocked mine off with a rubber plug

 

So basically I figured "in for a penny, in for a pound" and bought the Quicksilver XF exhaust about a week ago. The short version is that the killer drone at ~1300 RPMs is gone, it sounds great at low RPMs, but can get quite loud in the cabin at 40+ MPH and 1800 to 2500 RPMs under throttle. Cruising at highway speeds is substantially better than it was but still quite a bit louder than stock. Revving the engine (with a VelocityAP tune that removes the 4k limit) to ~6500 RPMs and then backing off results in some great "burbble."

This was the first time I attempted any sort of exhaust modification so it was definitely a learning experience. I'd caution anyone thinking about going the custom route to understand, as I now do, that "custom exhaust" shops don't necessarily know anything about "designing" an exhaust. They generally work on the same handful of models and know that part X works great on model Y; they have no idea of how to calculate the length of a Helmholtz resonator based on the frequency, exhaust length, etc. You'd really have to search ahead of time for a shop that understands that there would require several trips in, test drives, math, etc rather than a simple drop-in replacement (unless you're buying something like a Quicksilver exhaust that is pre-fabricated).

I'd rate the Quicksilver product at 8 out of 10 since highway cruising can still get pretty noisy even with moderate throttle. The exhaust vibrates at a specific frequency around 1600 RPMs that causes a rattle in the passenger side door/passenger side dash that I've yet to fully identify but I'm hoping that's just an aberration that can be easily fixed.

Is it worth the ~$1500 for the exhaust and installation? It's probably 50/50 for me but I'm either becoming more used to the "loudness" or exhaust particles have started to coat the mufflers so I feel like it's not quite as "raw" as it was a week ago. Either that or it's all in my head! Hopefully this helps some others out there thinking about replacing the stock exhaust

 

I have a 2016 XF S. I ended up going the custom exhaust route. I did a muffler delete and replaced the two stock secondary resonators with glass packs (took about 3 tries to end up with this solution) the Car sounds extremely close to an F type throughout the entire rev range without any noticeable drone. It does lack the exhaust burble of the f type however that is something that can be added in with a VAP tune. I had initially started out with just a muffler delete and it sounded good, however, there was an extreme drone in the 1300-1500 range and in the 3000-3400rpm range, then deleting the secondary resonators initially solved that problem, however, the car was entirely too loud above 4000rpm. With the Glass packs, the car sounds great, and the noise level is loud but not insane. I'll be posting a few videos in a couple of days to show people how it sounds.