I think that would make everyone happy. Nobody here hates aftermarket parts, but to take a modern car with very carefully balanced, emission compliant parts and put on non CARB compliant parts that completely change the flow characteristics of your exhaust and expect someone to give you a magic bullet is just ignorant. Nobody here messed up your car, you did.
I would expect this attitude from a teenager but you claim to be 30 years past getting your fathers advice. You should have grown up by now.
Whoa… easy there James so far you are WAY off base and do not know who you are speaking so harshly to. Don’t go making generalizations about the kind folk on here who help other people everyday for free. Collectively we have over a few Centuries of car knowledge and experience amongst us… The vast majority DO indeed get their hands dirty and have been doing so for longer than you have been alive. Myself included.
I have done many JDM swaps among Honda vehicles. You probably have a P0420 code among several others pointing to catalyst efficiency. You have to “tune” to adjust for the changes you made in the exhaust.
A FAR better place to search about this would be online RSX enthusiast forums as they will have done all the exhaust mods you are now attempting and will be able to tell you how they get through those changes. I am a bit shocked you are unaware of such things. These sites are made for exactly what you are doing at present.
On most sites they have a forum just for this purpose and the members will be able to help you much faster and more accurately than on here. I think you may need an adjustable piggyback ecu like Hondata to help you compensate for the changes you just put that vehicle through or at the very least tune your current ecu as needed. This is exactly what you are going to need to do, unfortunately doing exhaust mods is not as simple as bolting things on and driving off. You are now going to not pass future inspections until you sort out the tune…so your next stop should be the RSX enthusiast sites or at the very least Hondaforum.com or VTEC.net
Now I could go on about your demeanor and the things you are saying, but that would most likely result in you calling me names and trying to actually be a tough guy via a keyboard. That would be bad, I can assure you, so lets not go there eh? I am fairly certain this entire dialogue will be deleted and your stay here will be a short one. Look up “Honda Enthusiast websites” all the info you need is right there.
Check yourself, people here are quite knowledgeable for the most part. This is public forum, but we try to keep a measure of decorum, at least more than that of most automotive forums.
You aren’t always going to get answers that cater to your sensibilities, don’t take it personally. With that said nobody, owes you anything.
For the actual problem you’re experiencing; for many cars when you fit aftermarket headers, you’ll need a tune. What it likely happening is that that the ECU is seeing a greater volume of air/exhuast coming out, possibly more than that’s parameters allow, it then decides to go to a fat(failsafe) tune in an effort to preserve the engine response to perceived fault. This would be why you’re seeing carbon deposits on the exhaust tip. The O2 sensors were probably fine, it’s just that the readings they were getting were out of range due to higher flowing header. To correct this the car will need to be tuned by a professional on a chassis dyno. This is fairly specialized work, you’ll need to look around for a speed shop that offers this service, plan on budgeting for about 1.5 hours to 2 hours of dyno time (around $120ish-$240ish depending on who you get and where you live). There are outfits that will email you a tune, but you’ll need the necessary equipment (hand-held tuner or laptop with the correct software and dongles to upload it).
There are plenty of people here (myself included) that modify their cars to suit their tastes.
I may not agree with JamesRobertson’s words, but the way he’s been treated, it’s easy to see why he’s being defensive.
He’s doing exactly what all of us did years ago, which is to modify a vehicle, see it break, and learn from our mistakes. People supported me when I did that (years ago).
Today’s vehicles present a different challenge for modifying, but the interest in doing it is still there.
“Put it back to stock configuration” was the only thing that had been said to him before he went off the deep end and started lobbing insults at @Tester
I’m gonna guess when you screwed up your mods and people gave you advice, you didn’t immediately act like a jackass toward them.
“I did this and things broke. What should I do?” The only realistic answer is put it back to stock. Then, maybe, if you’re interested, you can learn about how these things work and how you might do it next time so that things don’t break - which would doubtless have been discussed with him if he hadn’t decided to be a 5 year old right out of the gate.
The problem is that he’s thrown a bunch of money at these bad mods, and what he really wants us to do is to give him a magic wand that he can wave over his bad mods and instantly turn them into good mods. We can’t do that, and he’s taking it out on us, which is not acceptable.
Hi James. I don’t agree anybody should have called you a schmuck or an ignoramus, but it was after you called them names, too. Please don’t curse at anybody. Some people were giving you good-faith advice about modding cars.
As for the post titles, when these questions come in, they have numbers and don’t make much sense. My co-moderator and I have to rename them based on what we read. It is not exact, but we do what we can with what is submitted at the time. That isn’t these posters’ fault.
This thread may be too far gone at this point, but if folks from here don’t have anything to add about the cat issue then perhaps it’s best to leave it alone.
Anybody who comes to this board asking for advice, and insults those trying to provide possible answers, and even insults the CarTalk website as a whole, because they didn’t like the answers, and keeps coming back to continue the insults instead of moving on, doesn’t reflect a person of high intelligence.
I told you what I thought was the likely culprit, and what it would likely take to correct the problem (assuming I’m correct, which I may or may not be).
You’re not totally wrong, but his input isn’t wrong just because you don’t like his attitude.
Folks have asked what the actuall DTC code is that you are getting. you have yet to give any kind of response to them. This information can help us help you.
@FoDaddy gave some very solid input. as did @Purebred
If you choose to ignore it, then that is on you.
Interesting that you cant offer a solution, oh wait no one does in this community. They just make disparaging comments that do not address the issue. It is more important for the people in this community to respond with useless bashing.
Can you give it up? Or will you respond again…again…and again.
Solutions, none to be found here. Just pride in attacking people!!!
