Civic Catalytic Converter Question

Hi all,

I have this non-vtec 1995 Civic and wondering whether I can install a high
flow catalytic converter to increase horse power. There are items sold on
eBay claiming minimum 10 HP increase; however they also indicate for
'off-road' activities only. I know most of these after market cats would
fail on emission test. I am sure there may be some high end products that
may give better performance than a stock and also street legal.

Have you guys had a chance to tweak these high flow cats to pass emission?
or is there a better performance product and street legal you can recommend.
If there is any, what price range and what sort of gain am I expecting?

Appreciate your help.

Matt

 

you wont get a 10 hp increase, if you went for a full exhaust system,
header, cat, pipe and muffler you would be lucky to get 10hp, very lucky.

 

Just remove all that crap and place a straight pipe coming from engine to
back of car. That should give you a lil-som-som to play around with.

Otherwise, you can swap engine, add turbo or supercharge it, bore the engine
so the diamaters increase. You'll need new pistons if you do this since the
ones you have now will be smaller in diameter. Add more compression to the
engine, use different gas and so on. There are a lot of things you can do to
improve the performance of your vehicle but the "good" mods are expensive as
well. That doesn't mean you shouldn't play around with the exhaust system as
well, but if you really want performance you have to start with the big
stuff and optimize the smaller stuff around the real power.

--Viktor