rwdds

I am so lucky to live in the Philadelphia region with lot’s of great Porsche performance shops right here. I just checked out the the new SOUL PERFORMANCE production facility in Willow Grove, PA. I’ve seen a few of the SOUL YouTube videos and a few weeks ago spoke with John (one of the owners) about their planned VALVED Performance exhaust for the 997.

I have been trying to make a decision about upgrading my exhaust for over 6 months and really want a valved solution, as my neighborhood is very quiet and there are 2 babies in the house next door. The other available options from different manufacturers, either had too much gurgle, excessive drone or were not pitched low enough for my taste. Fabspeed stopped production several years ago and are not planning to reenter this market. I had just about made the decision to go with a Borla system, which is not valved, when I found these guys. I was given a tour of the facility.

First, the shop is huge, over 20,000sq.ft. and very clean. They allowed me to see everything and it was sweet. Their steel is american made and they are bending the tubes for lot's of high-end super cars, right there. For a new startup business, these guys seem to be doing it right and business is apparently quite good. At this point, the John let me take his personal Cayman S, equipped with their already-in-production, valved exhaust for a joy ride, which I rather enjoyed. Not my 997, but it was plenty fast and the valved on/off tonal change was demonstrative. Slam-dunk!

They have an R&D test bed 997 in-house and they are working the kinks out now. The projected availability for their valved exhaust (custom made cats & headers are also available) will hopefully be toward the end of May. I believe I may be getting the first production installation done, as soon as it becomes available! Really cool guys that were a pleasure to hang out with. Stay tuned…

SOUL PERFORMANCE PRODUCTS
267 818-3202






Their test 997. Late in the afternoon and all the cars in the shop were out to the customers


I think these were 991 Turbo outlet pipes


More steel


Hard to tell from the pic but the shop is huge!

Awp34

Very Exciting New! I spoke to them a few weeks ago inquiring about options for 997. Hopefully this setup will be Carb and emissions legal here in CA. I have been reading many posts regarding smogging being a challenge with modified exhaust here in Cali. Please keep me posted once they are available. Thanks for the info

Mike5070

I had contacted them also. I got the impression the 997.2 would not be available until late summer. Did the indicate cost?

rwdds

Cost has not been finalized, but my impression was that it will be very competitive with the current marketplace (and the number of exhaust system components desired). I already have a cold air intake, GT3 Throttle Body/Plenum and 200 cel cats. this will be the last exhaust/intake mod for me and I am keeping the stock headers in place.

Soul Performance

It was a pleasure to have you stop in on such a nice day, thank you for coming through! Thank you for chatting with us about your exhaust expectations. As we move forward in the development process we'll reach back out so you can hear the prototype(s) in person if you'd like! We're always open to input on what our customers would like us to make.

Just for clarification, we do not bend the tubing in house. We design in house and then have the prototype components laser scanned / evaluated / and the resulting bends are then supplied to us by an ISO 9001:2015 certified aerospace manufacturing facility that we are partnered with. We prefer to work with the highest grade machinery available and the certified professionals running them opposed to spending millions on in house equipment. While it would be nice to do it on the spot, we find the end results come out better with our methodology!

Our system won't be CARB certified unfortunately. While we will be incorporating HJS HD 200 cell catalytic converters - it's still altering emissions devices which in theory would fail a visual inspection.

We're still evaluating options so it's hard to put a price out but we it will be competitively priced compared to other options on the market - that is always our goal.

I've started gathering content to make a development thread so everyone can keep tabs on what we are doing and give input, that should be going up sometime soon!

Thanks again!

-Mike S

Mike5070

A development thread would be awesome! I'll certainly be following it :-)

Thanks Mike,
Mike

OnlineAlias

Being very competitive given the current options shouldn't be too difficult. Exhausts for 997.x's will be a growing market as more and more of them get to us mere financial mortals on the secondary market.

Up til now the the market has been smaller so the people who make exhausts needed to (or simply could) charge a fortune for them. The prices on some of this stuff astounds me. (exhaust bypass tubes for $1000? Really? It is just 2 short tubes!)

Presto

rwdds

My bad. I thought I saw a large bending jig, but truthfully, I was very excited to be in the shop. John mentioned that a good bit of the steel is sourced here, in Pennsylvania? If I got that right, it's nice to know. I worked in a giant steel mill in western PA many, many years ago after high school. It's still in my blood, perhaps.

Soul Performance

We're exploring options, and we certainly want to offer what Porsche owners want and not what we want to build - so we'll share more information and ask for feedback shortly.


Thank you! We always do our best to offer great value.

We do have machinery to alter metal to our will, yes, but the sum of the mandrel bending machines that produce our bends are well over a million dollars - we prefer to focus on putting those pieces together with some back purged TIG welds! You are correct that the steel you laid eyes on is US sourced! My father used to work at the U.S. Steel Fairless Plant many, many years ago - we just can't get away from stainless!

-Mike S

Mike5070

This looks promising. The Porsche tax kills many potential upgrades with us Canadians have to pay an additional 30% exchange on the $ plus import duties and taxes. I agree, it's crazy paying $1k for two pieces of stainless tubing. Just my 2 cents.

rwdds

Update on the Soul valved exhaust…

After waiting several weeks, I received the go ahead from SOUL PERFORMANCE that their first production valved exhaust was ready to be installed. I dropped the car off late last week and it was finished on Monday. It has been hectic week and I am just beginning to really drive the car to experience this new “sound system” and it’s nuances. I intend to open a new thread soon to share sound clips inside and out during startups, idle and performance runs, but that will have to wait as the P car will be buttoned up during our summer vacation.

After 3 days of moderate driving, I will say that I AM BLOWN AWAY! In fairness, I tend to get excitable about every modification I do to my 997.1, but this exhaust is insane! First, starting up cold always defaults to the valves-closed position. The initial sound perhaps slightly louder than my stock mufflers, but very close in decibel level. I was really concerned about this quieter setting, but the SOUL mufflers are working well. Sound inside the car during spirited acceleration, especially past 3800 RPM is essentially the same. Note that I do have 200 cel X-pipes, a GT3 throttle body & plenum, as well as the Fabspeed dual air intake installed, which substantially increase the engine report in the power band above 38k. Back to the SOUL valved exhaust, at idle, the sound quality seems to have a bump in the low frequencies, just a bit more low rumble, which I really like. Absolutely no drone that I have detected.

The valved system can be actuated with the two supplied remote key fobs, but even better, the HomeLink garage button above the windshield was activated as the main controller. Pressing the left side button for a second, sets the valves open and the sound changes definitively. The pitch and rumble deepen and it is definitely louder, but not bothersome to my ear.

Step on the accelerator and the beast awakens. Wow! Race car sound levels. It’s really impressive. On the highway, the valved-open sound response is powerful and commanding. Passing thru gears is joyful and the downshift blips are wonderful. Approaching my neighborhood, I just return the valves to closed and nobody is wiser. Love this!

I chose to swap the stock tips for the SOUL PERFORMANCE, custom black carbon fiber tips, which (I think) are beautiful. I am really liking black exterior accessories to harmonize with the Meteor Gray color.

Last note: the guys at SOUL have been a pleasure to deal with. I have been working out the details with them for a couple of months and have visited their facility outside of Philadelphia, several times. They patiently answered all my questions leading up to the installation and managed a number of my crazy concerns. Overall, my expectations were greatly exceeded and I am a very happy customer.

Video and sound clips will be coming from me after next week and I am sure some will be posted by the SOUL PERFORMANCE team soon. Get this!

Mike5070

Looking forward to development on the 997.2 version 😁

nwGTS

Really glad there are more options on the market for our cars.
And agree, $800-1000 for bypass pipes i see on the market is robbery.

Soul Performance

Thank you again for choosing us, glad you like the sound! Here she is in all her glory:




Same!

We are doing our best to keep our pricing fair. Each exhaust is labor heavy and the HJS cats are expensive, but we desire to keep things reasonable while still covering the costs of maintaining and growing our business to make more / better products!