During a fluid change I noticed that my cat springs were fully compressed on my BERK 70mm HFC, I had remembered seeing a post on s2ki, another member had the same issue. You can find the post HERE. In my post I mistakenly thought that the gasket from the manifold to the cat needed to be replaced. When I went back to the topic I saw Billman had posted warning that driving around with fully compressed springs WILL crack either the manifold or the cat. I inspected mine and fortunately there was no damage. If it happened to 2 cars it probably happened to more. I thought I'd post a really simple how-to in case you are in the same situation.



So, if your cat spring look like this (image borrowed from almawa):

6jj2 by aguroka233, on Flickr


Buy this:


20140510_103718 by aguroka233, on Flickr


Unscrew the nuts and remove bolts inspect for bends, add washers to first Flange:

20140510_103713 by aguroka233, on Flickr

Install (I ended up using 5 washers on either side, you want the spring to be a little more than 50% compressed, I think I heard 75% somewhere). Nut torque: 16lb/ft:
20140510_121303 by aguroka233, on Flickr

While you are under the car it is probably a check for cracks in the cat and manifold.



Hope this helps someone out there. Feel anyone has any pointers/corrections feel free to jump in.

 

Great post! I'm gonna check mine tonight.

 

Yeah, me too. Missed the thread where Billman warned about this. My exhaust was all hacked when I got the car (some idiot welded a cheapo universal CAT in place of stock, and it went bad, so had to buy used stock CAT and CAT-back - kicker is car had less then 80k miles, so PO could have gotten a new CAT free from Honda). When I mounted the new (used) CAT, I seem to recall thinking the springs were too tight.

Going to look at this asap so I don't risk a cracked manifold. Great post, thanks!

 

Glad I could help someone out.

 

I thought it was odd those things were so damn tight. Thanks gotta get on this.

 

I recently installed a Berk 70mm HFC. I just grabbed a couple of extra nuts outta the tool box and ran one down each bolt before I slipped it through the flanges. It works the same as your washers, but I didn't have to worry about them falling off and junk while I was putting it all together. for warning others about this issue.