I currently have a 2011 XF with the n/a 5.0. Does anyone have recommendations for exhausts for a better sound? It's a shame having an engine like that but having it muted by the stock exhaust. I've already checked out the Mina Gallery and Quicksilver options but at around $1,000 it seems a bit excessive but then again there don't seem to be many other options.

 

remove the center exhaust and have a custom one made and get a x pipe put in the front where the old front muffler was at and then remove the valves from the rear mufflers.

 

Those are not that bad of a price really for a quality made stainless system if you like the sound. I decent custom exhaust will go out at 1500-2000 headers back ( less for cat back of course)

 

The 5.0 NA doesn't have valves in the rear mufflers, only the SC and XFR do.

 

your correct I completely misssed the N./A part.

 

The exhausts I was looking at were just rear muffler deletes mainly and not full exhaust systems. So I wasn't sure if there was a better alternative to that rather than spending $1,000 on basically a straight pipe from the rear axles to the tips

 

I'm sure you could do better than straight pipes but be careful. Back in my youth, I spent many thousands of dollars on exhaust for one car. I'd try this muffler, then a week later go back and try a different muffler, a week later add a resonator, etc. etc. eventually completely rebuilding the system at least three times. Some mufflers just sounded horrible or there'd often be an annoying resonance set up at just a certain rpm. But the crazy thing was that I started out with the idea that bigger was better and turns out that it sounded best after I went back to smaller pipes. Jaguar probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, engineering the stock exhaust system with computer simulations surely followed up with lots of trial and error. Essentially you are building a musical instrument much like a trombone or a french horn (english horn in this case). We don't have millions of dollars for R&D so you really need somebody with experience or you could wind up wasting a lot of money trying to get a sound you can live with.

There's a local high performance muffler shop that has a national following in the Corvette community. What Kirk has been doing for decades that's really cool is to make a video/audio recording of each custom system they build. I remember him doing it way back before the internet, tho you had to come into their waiting room to view the videos back then. I can't imagine driving from Michigan for an exhaust system, but you might search for a performance muffler shop nearer you that does the same sort of thing. Surely he's not still the only one doing it. Even though they might not have a recording of an XF, you could go through their videos, pick a car with a similar enough v8 engine (that might take a little research) that you like the sound and ask them, "Can you make my car sound like this one in your video?" Here's a link to the local shop's youtube channel for examples.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBd...w0qn30gIVGvb1A

Personally I like the stock exhaust, but then I had mostly gotten that out of my system by the time my hair fell out.

 

You can get any competent exhaust shop to just cut off the existing mufflers and weld in some pipes to the stock tips for very little money. Exhaust is very subjective so see how that sounds to you and go from there.

 

I kind of figured having a shop just make me a custom one would probably be the best route to go, I've had the rear mufflers off to get an idea of how loud it would be and I think making an exhaust from the axle back might be the route I go to get a sound I like.

 

Yep, that is the way to go.
I had my exhaust shop make the set-up from the axle back and it didn't cost a fortune, then when I decided the new mufflers were just too droney I simply swapped the whole section back for the original mufflers. Did it myself in the garage, not hard to do and only takes about an hour.

 

I wished I'd thought about that when I was messing around with modifying my first Toyota Supra 30 years ago. The exhaust shop just torched out the original stock exhaust pipe instead of properly undoing all the clamps and hangers so I couldn't put it back. If I could have bolted the stock system back in I wouldn't have had to suffer so much for that first week with the first iteration. OMG it sounded awful between 25 and 35 mph which is most city driving. You sure learn some hard and expensive lessons when you're young. And today there are collectors that'd give their eye teeth to find an original muffler with the two little pea-shooter tips. Wish I'd have saved it instead of letting the shop throw it in the scrap bin.

 

30 years ago exhausts were not made out of stainless, I am sure pulling them at the clamps were not an option, there were likely welded with rust at those joints. That said I had exhaust on my 70 'cuda cut out, shop welded in a new coupler and then used clamps for the Thrush mufflers (rember those were on every car if not Cherry Bombs) . I loved the sound, but the cops didn't. but back in those days they used to give out excessive noise tickets like they were water ( since we were mostly kids, it was a way to harass us I guess. Now that many cars and trucks are loud, I think they have better things to do

 

Where is the exhaust valve located at in the muffler? Does it require cutting into the muffler or just removing where its bolted on and cutting the valve out?

 

You probably don't know this over in the States. Jaguar sold 50 XFR's in the UK that were fitted with the Quicksilver system back in 2010. They were named Le Mans special edition. I have one and can say in all honesty that there is no drone whatsoever at any speed. The sound is glorious and a real head turner.

Here's a diagram of the standard XFR system so you can see things.

 

I have a mina exhaust for sale if youre interested

 

This was my solution, deep purr but not overly loud. Zaustworx rear box delete kit (too loud) with resonators from Amazon added.

 

I have had a mina exhaust installed my 2012 XFR for about 10 years now. Perfect balance across the board. Still looks and sounds the same as the day I purchased it.

 

I have a 2010 Jaguar XF 5.0 N/A... Looking to replace my rear muffler.. what is the Rear muffler size?? Is it 2.25??

 

Pretty sure you will find it is 2.5.