I recently bought a 97 civic, everything was going good till I decided to take the exhaust off for the heck of it (I wanna learn how to work on cars so decided to learn on a civic). Now when the car is at normal operating temperature, the car stutters so bad, it won't accelerate at any rpms; even if the car is already rolling. I let the car cool down and it ran perfect again till it warmed up. I had a check engine light on before I removed the exhaust, it was for the o2 sensor in bank 1 and the speed sensor; should I put the exhaust back on and see if it will still sputter? I was ripped off pretty bad when I bought the car from some dude who claims he's a "Honda know it all" so I decided to ask y'all for help, I learned how to replace a axle and brake master cylinder, but I'm just completely lost at this current situation. Any advice / help would be appreciated, I'm only 19 and finally decided I needed to follow my passion of cars

 

Whenever the engine runs rough only after it is warmed up, the first thing to test is whether the problem is prevented when the primary O2 sensor is unplugged.

 

Check for the sensors whether they have been plugged back correctly. Did you observe any check lights after removing it?