Page 1: - Home PagePage 1: - Home PagePage 2: - Angel/Demon Eyes Omnitec Gen I
Page 3: - Angel/Demon Eyes Levi Gen II
Page 4: - Photos of Angel/Demon Eyes
Page 5: - 99-01 DIY headlight upgrade
Page 6: - Fender filler ideas
Page 7: - Rear powered sunshade retrofit
Page 9: - M Parallel Wheels and Pole Positions added
Page 10: - DIY SilverVision bulbs
Page 11: - Adding the 99-01 Rocker Panel Covers Project
Page 12: - DIY HID retooling/retrofit
Page 13: - BMW Navigation Retrofit (retooling) for a virgin E38
Page 14: - Betties's Calipers get painted
Page 15: - DIY Shdowline Trim with Blackout Tape
How did I get those exhaust tips on Bettie's rear end?

I first thought about and looked into a sport exhaust system such as AC Schnitzer, Eisenmann, Racing Dynamics, Hamann, Hartge, Alpina, Dinan, Remus, Supersprint, or Triflow and so on and so forth.

I decided instead to do a mod that would put chromed tips onto my car that looked like the sports systems but without the major hassle and expense of re-doing my exhaust system, (which works just fine for me by the way). Nico was the inspiration for my project, he posted these pics one day and I was hooked.

This car is a wreck now and I am sorry about that, but Nico is OK and we hope he buys another E38 someday.

The reality is that I do not drive my car like a sports car, at least not very often, ;-) but I want my car to stand out from the crowd and exposed exhaust tips seemed like just the thing. As I said on my opening page, I owned an E32 735i and it had dual tips exposed on one side, but the E38 which has legitimate dual exhausts hides the tips under the rear valence.

Fist I made a drawing of how the OE tips were located under the rear valence to see what could be done. The tips that are there are bent down and I first thought of just cutting off the bent part and welding tips on there. I realized that the tips would exit too high from the valence, and so I started thinking of another idea.

I did consider for a while getting some tips welded onto the ends of the OE tips but these would come out so low they would scrape on every entry apron and driveway I entered.

Finally I came up with the idea of cutting off the original tips @ half way down and getting some exposed dual chromed tips welded on there. The top of the tips would exit just where the valence had a small radius turn in it.

I measured the dual tips I wanted to buy and made a template from them to layout the opening in the valence. Using masking tape to trace this outline, then I went for it with a hack saw and files to cut away the plastic and smooth the edges of the openings.

Once I got the openings done, I made an appointment to get the tips welded in. The muffler shop tech was amazed at the clean edge I had made on my rear valence openings, (really fine grit sandpaper). We discussed my plan to weld them in @ half way down the OE tip but he felt this would not be stable. He proposed that we cut off the OE tips just in front of the silencers where they exited and were straight and weld the new tips in there. To get them down to where I wnated them, he would modify the hangers on the mufflers. I said OK - let's do it so he cut off the original tips and held the new chromed dual tips in place only to find that they would not fit without some customization. They were way too long so he first cut off the chromed tips from the Y pipes. What we had left were two chromed 3" diameter pipes @ 5" long.
Next he cut some 2" diameter steel pipes to make a new Y adapter that was short enough to fit into the space we had. Finally, he lined them up and they were perfect.

The last step was to release the holding brackets on the silencers, and he heated the exhaust pipe in front of them and pulled on the silencers toward the ground. They moved pretty easily once the pipes were red hot! Once this was done, the tips lined up and came through the rear valence right where I wanted them. The only thing left was to reconnect the hanging brackets, but of course, these needed to be modified too, to allow the silencers to hang lower. He did this with some straight steel strapping and the OE hanging brackets. It took 2 days of @ 2 hours each day to get them installed.

Here are some close up shots of the tips from below and a dimensioned drawing of the tips and adaptor that my muffler shop fabricated.