As most of you know, I go through parts like ken o goes through cars. I'm always buying something to test out so that I can gain feedback from it.
A few weeks ago I had a boss frog straight pipe, fm high flow cat, and a stock cat in my possession. I compared the weight of the three cats, sound and put them on the butt dyno. The baseline for this test was the stock cat.
Car had a monsterflow filter on stock intake plumbing, UD pulley, cracked ebay header, and FM single tip exhaust.
My conclusions:
Stock cat: 10 pounds, sounds like stock, power feels pretty good for minor bolt ons
Boss Frog Straight Pipe: 3 pounds, spec miata loud and disgusting, less low end torque/slightly freer top end/lots of carbon-soot out of tip
FM High Flow Cat: 5 pounds, slightly louder than stock with more growl, more power altogether throughout the whole powerband
The obvious choice became the high flow cat. I had a JR high flow cat on the '96 and I thought it made a difference. I now confirm that the FM cat made a big difference on the '94 so I stuck with the FM high flow cat.
Since the cat shootout, Rogue welded the cracks on the header, I added a monsterflow carbon intake w/heatshield and TSI's. The car feels way stronger than my '96 did. I contribute part of this to the fact that the '94 is 150 pounds lighter than my '96 was.
i've got another intake to try out and a header on the way. I hope to get to the dyno for an intake/header shootout and some real world #'s
soon.
Thanks to Chris Fain for lending a hand.
