Hello,
I have a R53 2006 Cooper S. My front pipe broke under the shielded flex section. I want to replace it with something economical. If I put the cheapy ones on ebay on wiht the "test pipe" will that make my check engine light go on?

Any recomendations for a replacement?

Thanks,

 

Obx header and stock cat welded to the geader. I purchased mine a week ago for 175$ 4-2-1 design.
A test pipe deletes the cat and will throw a code inless you use the spacer trick or get a 02 sim. But for as chepa as the obx header is you will gain power and fix it its the best of both worlds.

 

Where does one get a "test pipe"? Looking at the OBX header, just need to get it to the cat-back exhaust...

 

I'm assuming that your original cat is not usable?

I've seen some relatively inexpensive ones I think from Magnaflow. Other forum members commented that they are lower quality than oem, tend to rust out after only a couple or a few years.

Test pipe is not hard to find. Check eBay maybe.

I would discourage the test pipe. Modern cats are pretty high-flow these days. Performance / Horsepower gains from deleting the cat are minimal -especially if you don't have a built racing engine with a ported head, oversize valves, radicle cam etc. As others mentioned, you'll also throw a code. Just a theory of mine here, but if the O2 sensor reads a high amount of hydrocarbons -because you deleted your cat, it may try to lean the fuel mixture to compensate. This would be a great way to literally burn a hole through the top of a piston! -I dunno, there's a sensor both before and after cat, maybe our ECUs are smarter than that -but I wouldn't risk it on my car.

In the 1990's I used to remove air pumps and cats from the older cars I had -it was cool, right?!

These days I think the manufacturers have things running more efficiently and cleaner. I do my part for the environment by leaving the smog equipment on my daily driver these days. Sure I'd like to have a header, and a louder better flowing muffler maybe, that will help a with cool sound and maybe a little gas milage without putting more pollution in the air.

Thanks for letting me rant a little. LOL

 

Most cats on our cars will not stand up to the high temperatures of track duty. They will melt, effectively stopping up your exhaust, thereby ruining your week-end and causing you to go the "test pipe" route.

 

Ahh, that makes sense. I was aware that people run them on the track -but I always thought it was to get every last bit of available power.

Thanks for pointing out the heat issue on a track car.