Please help newbie with exhaust

[lowridingdsm]

Ok i need some quick answers i am getting ready to do some exhaust work but everybody is tellin me that you cant run your car without a cat because of emisions so my question is does it add more horepower to straight pipe to a muffler or just do 3" exhaust with cat to a muffler.



please help
i got a 95 mit eclipse awd

 

[talon1987]

running a straight pipe gives you a little power and i believe it gives you a little top end speed... but imo i would just go for a 3" high flow cat so you dont have to worry about changing out the straight pipe for emissions .... they have magnaflow highflow cats on ebay for like 60$ http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7956376130&category=33629 ... and also you might pull a cel light if you put on a straight pipe because of the 2nd 02 sensor but you can by pass that with this http://www.vfaq.com/mods/O2bypass.html

 

[97GS-TSpyder]

In relistic terms, with my mods (profile) i lost a .1 f a second in the 8th and gained .3 in the 1/4 with a open after downpipe setup

this was from my apexi n1 full catback then taking the centerpipe from catback out this is what happened.

It might not help much, but also what are your goals, if you just want liek 300 hp or so, it prolly wouldnt make too much of a difference. If you want to do a lil higher numbers you might want to thing str8 pipe.