I was sure the S8 pipes are 61mm OD? I measured them a few times

.....following this with interest.

My last car was a Nissan Skyline 350GT (4-door 350z for want of a better description) with a 3.5 v6.
It sounded more purposeful than the S8 does - kinda miss the burble.

Trying to see if I can get some of that burble back without being too noisy

Realistically, this isn't going to happen, for the following reasons:

(1) You'd need 20 firm commitments from active D2 owners on here - assuming you're not also enlisting significant numbers of additional D2 owners elsewhere... :D

(2) Of a total of around 110 (optimistically..) active members listed on here, at a rough guess no more than 60 of those are D2 owners.

(3) To reach your total therefore, one third of those would need to:

a) Be interested,
b) Be currently (or in the near future...) needing a replacement,
c) Have the spare funds available to spare for this - including an up-front deposit that Milltek would probably ask for,
d) Be willing to commit to payment of this.

There's virtually no chance of this happening, so I think this idea is a non-starter.

I think a far better option is to do one of the following:

(a) Wait for a "spare' used Milltek to come free - unlikely, but still more likely than this plan...
(b) Get someone else to custom make one - likely to be far cheaper, and more tailored to individual needs,
(c) Use Amar's front-end approach to get a similar sonic fix.

I'll go for (a) or (b), and some of the posts on here probably reflect the reality of doing this as well, from what I've seen ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8abHWiETPvs&t=8s

I'm not custom exhaust fan, but here is a guy in Germany who will do custom exhaust for 550 euro installed. He is on German A8 D2 forums and on Facebook.

Downpipes are ~60, after the middle box they reduce to 55.

They reduce! hmm that sounds a bit restrictive. Maybe it doesn't matter after that chambered middle box.
I must have measured them before that box, I think I measured somewhere in the middle when the exhaust was off the car.

I agree with Tintin, is Milltek all that? I bet there are custom fabricators out there who can do a much better job.

Supersprint still do one, but they want stupid money for it (~US$850 !!).

They also offer a centre box for a full cat-back job.

I've sent off a query with a performance exhaust mob near me to see what they will charge.
You should be able to flare 2.25" (57mm) OD pipes to fit over the 55mm pipes quite easy, so using a 2.25" twin straight through muffler (can't do straight pipes here) should reduce costs...

If you are going to ditch the middle box, I would stick with the 61mm pipes as before the mid box. No point reducing the diameter if you are doing straight through mufflers?
The stock diameter before the cats, and after the cats is 61mm or 61.5mm

I'll keep the centre box.
Aussie (or should I say Victorian) roadworthiness requirements mean I need to keep two mufflers.
They only do random checks on noise and condition (no yearly MOT), but it's a risk I'm not bothered with, as I suspect I'll get the noise I'm chasing with a new back box.

its a shame but a good bit of info on here, i'll get a complete custom exhaust system made up with sports cats, x pipe etc, round about nov time need more noise +++