Hey, guys-
I'm looking to buy a 2002 Civic SI. The only exhaust mod the guy has done is to replace the stock exhaust manifold with an aftermarket race header (w/cat delete). Where he lives, he doesn't need to get tested for emissions, but it's definitely a requirement where I live (Albuquerque). Any ideas/experience from anyone here with whether or not the car would pass as it's set up now, generally speaking of course?

I'm wondering if I should factor in the cost of a stock exhaust manifold/converter into the purchase price. The stock converter is crazy expensive, but it looks like it'd be about $500 to get a stock manifold and aftermarket cat. Any thoughts?

 

i have a 2004 VP with a cat delete headet i used a megan o2 eliminater that i got for 20 dollars and i recently passed my emissions test last week. but it was not visibly inspected just hooked up to the machine some places search for such things.
http://www.robearracing.com/pd-megan...or-cel-fix.cfm

 

in NM, do they do visual or sniff? If not, borrow a scanner from autozone or something and do a quick scan to see if it throws any cel/codes, of course your engine check light has to be off as well. If no cel/codes and no check light, you should be good to go!

 

Thanks for your replies. The mechanical O2 sim seems like a good workaround for my situation. The car is throwing a CEL for the O2 sensor, but the sim should fix that. Assuming that's the only reason for the CEL, the OBDII scan shouldn't show anything else emissions-wise, right?

Here in NM they do a quick visual check and an OBDII scan for vehicles 1996 and newer. I'm not worried about the visual, though, as some of the corner emissions places are run by people that barely know how to run the tests. I'm sure they won't notice a missing cat. If they do, I guess the worst case scenario would be to purchase a used stock exhaust manifold and an aftermarket cat, which would cost more than an O2 sim, but I'd just have to deal.

 

Sim should do the trick.
As for visual, you could put on cat cover look alike, which I've seen someone do it on other cars. Basically, it's a slap of face sheet metal that looks like a CAT and mounts over the pipe around where OEM CAT used to be. I think this guy paid like $12??? or something like that. In anycase, it'd cost lot less than going out and purchasing oem/aftermarket CAT. GL!!!