I noticed a minor exhaust leak from just before the catalytic converter. It seems to go away once the car is warmed up which is kind of weird.

I was thinking about removing the car and putting a straight pipe in it's place. A few questions.
- how much noisier would the car be?
- is this a do-it-yourself job?

I'm a little worried about cutting the exhaust (use a cut-off wheel?) and getting a new straight/curved pipe that's the correct length and angle? Or can these exhaust pipes be bent at home using some sort of MacGyver technique???

If your cat is 4 bolts, you can buy a test pipe but it is expensive. When i removed mine, it was too noisy for me with the stainless steel exhaust from Fun Imports. So i installed a resonator at that place and the sound was perfect for me.

This will make it a lot easier:

http://www.autoricambi.us/product/EX6-4 ... -with-EFI/

If you have the stock resonator (center muffler) and rear muffler it will not be too loud.

As stated above, if you only have a performance type rear muffler then likely it will be too loud.

I took my cat out a number of years ago and put the test pipe in. I still had the resonator and the Ansa muffler. As mentioned not too loud at all. I upgraded to two inch pipe and no resonator and it is louder for sure but not excruciating loud. It does drone on when I do a long distance drive so I actually stick ear plugs in. The weird thing there is the radio is clearer with the plugs in at 100kph and top down...
Chris

Why not just fix the exhaust leak?? I like to keep things simple.

majicwrench wrote:Why not just fix the exhaust leak?? I like to keep things simple.

Yep. That would be great if possible. It looks like the leak is coming from where the pipe goes into the cat. Maybe I'll take a closer look.