when I bought my T5 almost exactly eight years ago, I had no idea what a fantastic car I had bought. On par in almost everything with my BMW 325ti Compact at the time, except sound. Except at cold start or when driving in the lower gears, there is not much to hear from the T5 engine. And a five-cylinder should not only be felt, but also heard. I decided to change this by installing a sport exhaust system. I was helped by the fact that I worked in an exhaust company and therefore knew what was important when judging an exhaust system.
My absolute favorite was the MILLTEK, but the production of this system had been discontinued a short time before. By chance, however, I learned from a German forum that the FERRITA from Sweden should be an insider tip. And so I decided to buy it. And from this exhaust I would like to report now:
The FERRITA, which is delivered without registration papers, is acoustically rather of the reserved variety. Cold it is not much louder than the original, but driven warm it sets the acoustic accents, which were missing so far. In every speed range, the engine is now audible without being annoying. Only at about 1500 1/min is a hum frequency present, but you get used to it. Overall, the sound is very harmonious!
There are also positive things to report about the build quality – everything is quite neatly finished. Due to the 1.5 mm wall thickness of the pipes and the additional center muffler, the system is not a lightweight! On the other hand, the durability of the system, which is mainly made of the material 1.4509, is okay: in all these years, no complaints or damage, only the sound has become a bit more growly.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when installing the overall very accurately fitting system:
The holes of the input flange have to be filed open a bit, otherwise no M10 screws (Volvo original size) will fit through. The supplied M8 screws would work, but that would be quite a botch job in my opinion.
At the outlet pipes of the rear silencer, 15 mm long pipe sockets had to be welded on both sides. Otherwise – with correctly adjusted end pipe spacing – the slots of the pipe connections would have been partially “exposed”. Attention, this measure must be carried out only with the Facelift models, since they have an approx. 30 mm larger distance of the two tailpipes. I had told FERRITA at the time that they could remedy this problem by simple means.
The great looking but very heavy tailpipe trims (diameter: 100 mm) made of polished stainless steel are normally clamped with grub screws (with tips). The threads for the screws are represented by hexagon nuts fixed on the outside of the trims with two welding spots. Quite a joke – I don’t want to get such a loosened trim off as a rear driver. That’s why I had the trim welded on with TIG (filler metal: 1.4370). As a driver of a FL-R design model, welding is the only option, because the greater length of the bumper means that when adjusting the tail pipes, you get out of the clamping range of the screw connections.
I replaced the supplied rather rustic exhaust clamps with more professional clamps from MAGNAFLOW.
Please refer to the pictures for details. The rear view of the car shows the installation condition at that time with the tailpipes mounted quite low as a precaution, because I wanted to avoid hitting the tail pipes when driving over bumps in the road. In the meantime, I have aligned the tailpipe trims centrally in the bumper cutouts without any problems.
Enjoy reading
Regards
Volker
