Thread: this is urgent!!! please help!!!

alright sr20 drivers, so a couple days ago, i lost major power in my sr20. for those who don't know, i have a 95 200 sx se-r with basically all of the bolt-ons and my good O s4's. today i was testing my car on the highway, you know good O power band from 4500rpm to 7500rpm that the s4's produce in the sr's and found out that all my high end torque is GONE! i have my low end, my it seems not like before when i hit the gas at 4500 and it just shoots(s4 owners know what im talkin about) the power just isn't there anymore. i can't seem to find out whats wrong with it, i mean my motor still runs fine and there isn't any mechanical issues, but it seems like my exhaust is not producing enough flow. i just got customize 2.25 inch from headers back so i figured it can't be anything wrong with the system. i also checked to see if maybe some idiot thought it was funny to stick things down my pipe to block the flow of exhaust and didn't see anything. so now im stuck. the only thing im guessing is wrong is my cat converter. could that be? could that cause such power loss? my thoughts is that maybe something broke in my old converter and is now blocking the exhaust passage way. if anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated! i hate seeing my SR like this.

i can almost guarantee you that your cat is toast. matter fact when i had my first se-r with full bolt ons and s3's and same setup as you i melted my stock cat, and 3 catco high flow cats. Come to find out the catco high flow cats have been known for that. It was just too high reving of an engine and made good power for that. I just ended up gutting the cat and going like that. No choice basicly. I made better power everywhere as i was still using a 2.25" exhaust. Definetly take a look.

cat is clogged?

check and see if your cat is glowing that is one way to tell if it is clogged

How is the cat clogging when they are pretty free flowing? I plan on doing S4's myself so now I'm a little concerned

the cat will get hot especially if you drive the car hard alot. The cat will get overly hot from high rpm exhaust flow and it will start to melt and clog. I had this happen to me 4 times total. One time i was on a 1200 mile trip back to texas from arizona and it happened to me. The car was gutless and by the time i got home to texas the car hardly wanted to rev at all and had no power. I pulled the cat off and found the whole front part of it melted almost blocking any exahust flow from going through.

Who says a cat is free flowing?

Why do you think alot of turbo people dont use them? Cuz of the extra heat from the turbo, extra exhaust flow, it hurts power bigtime compared to running a straight piece of pipe or test pipe.

Plain and simple the cat will be destroyed when you get over a certain point. There could be other factors that will do it such as leaky injectors causing the fuel to build up in the cat and get hot then melt it.

If you can get away with having a gutted cat or no cat then do it. or keep a good one for smog testing then take it off and swap it out for a test pipe that looks like a cat or throw on a gutted one.

Alright thanks you guys! That could be exactly it. Just yesterday my car decided to completely not want to move. It bogged out so much that i had to literally ride in first gear, step and release gas petal and finesse it all the way back home. I'm def cutting off the cat, and either install the CATCO or buy a brand new cat amd just drill the living crap out of it! haha...Thanks all, I'll keep you guys posted if its a different prob occurs.

before you buy another cat and throw parts at it, use either a test pipe, orafter you cut it out, go around a quick drive to make sure it doesn't bog, that way if in fact the cat wasn't clogged, you can at least rule that out