Something that I'm thinking of doing. Started talking to Meir about it in another thread, but thought I'd make one here.
I've got exhaust bypass pipes on my stock muffler which give an incredible sound. These are the pipes:
As you can see, it connect just after the CATS and straight into the tailpipes. I'm considering the possibilities of adding valves so that I can control whether it's on or off.
The electrical side is easy (relatively speaking). Just have to get a 996 exhaust switch, use a latching relay so that on and off can be one-touch rather than holding the button. It's the valves that I'm trying to get my head around.
There's two potential ways:
Electrical exhaust valves
If there were such a thing as 1" electronic cut-outs that you could buy with motorised valves, then that would be easy. Wire them up to the dash switch with a relay, bobs your uncle. But every electric exhaust cut-out valve I've seen are 2.5" and up. This would be far too big. Are there any that are around 1"?
Vacuum exhaust valves
The other option is to install vacuum valves with a vacuum solenoid to control them, like an OEM setup. I could source the valves off another car that could be around the correct size, then wire the switch up to a vacuum solenoid. The solenoid is (apparently) the little box that directs the vacuum to the valves when receiving a 12v current, and stops doing so if it doesn't get any. In other words, opening and closing the valve with the current received from a switch.
But my question for the vacuum setup is this - where on earth do I get a vacuum feed on a Boxster? Also, could someone explain how the solenoids are connected up? They have an electrical connector (for the switch), but 3 vacuum nipples? This is a guess, but are there two for the vacuum to pass through the solenoid, and one for going to the exhaust valve?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!