Does anyone know the policey on test pipes in general? Does the average shop install them, even though they are illegal to have. I dont want to go down to the shop and ask to have them put on a test pipe and have them tell me no way in hell and start some shit.

 

Then just do it yourself...

Most shops won't do it because there are HEAVY federal penalties associated with doing it, unless the car is strictly for non-road use (I.E. Not registered/inspected, brought to them on a trailer, etc).

It's not that hard to do yourself, but you and only you will bear the responsibility if you are ever caught with it. You also risk not being able to get the car inspected in the future if a shop looks under there and sees the test-pipe.

On that note, I have three vehicles with no cats... Two are street-cars... One of them I bought that way, the other I removed it because it was severely slowing my turbo spool time (this car now only gets about 150 miles a year put on it, so it has almost zero impact to the environment). The third car is a track-only car that doesn't get driven on the streets and is trailered to events.

One last thing; on a normally aspirated or even supercharged car, you will probably see very little performance increase by removing the cat. In many (most) cases, you will probably even see a decrease in low end power.

Ricky

 

Hmmmm.........why would nividia sell a catback exhuast and a test pipe just for that exhaust if it lost power? you sure bro?

 

Only way to find out for sure is to install the exhaust, dyno the car, then install the test pipe and dyno the car again.

I'm just talking from my experiences, it IS possible to slow down the exhaust flow TOO much such that your engine takes more effort to pump the burned mixture out the exhaust, thereby reducing your net horsepower. The effect of this becomes more pronounced at lower RPMs... I don't know about you, but I feel an S2000 can't really afford to lose any more low end power based on what it was given from the factory. The majority of one's driving on the streets is NOT in VTEC, no matter how hard you drive your car... If you do, then the point of this discussion is moot because you won't have an engine left after very long and you won't have to worry about it any more at that point.

Just my $.02... I've been messing with Hondas for a long time and have done a lot of 'custom' stuff that's out of the ordinary and have been through a lot of trial and error experiments, several of them specifically were exhausts with different engine configurations on the same car (supercharged, normally aspirated, and finally turbocharged, both with and without cats, with and without mufflers, etc..).



Ricky

 

to catless (street driven) S's...not worth the impact to emissions IMO. IIRC, the EPA fine for running a test pipe is up to $2500.

 

thanks for the comments guys, i appreciate everyones info, very helpful!

 

I dunno, maybe because people pay money for them?

Just a thought.

 

most likly for those few turbo s2ks.

 

Yep...