hey everyone so I just put a BHR ignition system on my car about 2 weeks ago and it has been running great until the other day. I can definitely feel a loss of power and acceleration and the tone of the exhaust sounds different. Also, I had a P0420 code come up which had come up a little over a year ago when before I changed my coils and plugs. Just trying to get some opinions on if it's something with the ignition system or if I my CAT/o2 sensor is going bad. Thanks!

 

BTW, car has 130k miles

 

P0420 is cat failure. I don't think i've ever seen a case where that wasn't true for the RX-8.

 

okay thanks just trying to get opinions before I spend money to replace things

 

Yeah, happened to me. Your cat is clogged or broken up.
Drop it and inspect it. Gut it or replace it.
Don't delay, if the code came up a year ago, you are in danger of killing your engine.





This is the broken up front half of mine.
If the back half is intact, that's good.
If the back half is broken up, then you may have pieces blocking your exhaust, and you'll have to get them out.

 

thinking about just taking it out and replacing it with the BHR mid pipe. has anyone tried this and if so how do you like it?

 

That line always makes me shake my head a bit. A successful product line always has an answer of "yes" to "has anyone tried it". That's why it's a successful product line.

It's the best midpipe out there in my opinion. An opinion that is shared by most here. People that disagree mostly just complain about the price, or have a wierd fascination with obnoxious exhaust sounds.

 

good to hear! I figured it would be the best, just trying to see if it's much louder since I won't be using a catalyst

 

It's the volume of a gutted cat, with the tone of an ungutted cat, maybe a bit deeper.

Other midpipes tend to get much louder, raspier, and or drone.

 

perfect. thanks for the help! what do I have to do to keep it from throwing a CEL?

 

You have to tell the ECU to stop doing emissions tests. This requires a reflashing option, either MazdaEdit (2004s-2011s) or Cobb AccessPort (2004s-2008s). There are no hardware tricks you can do at the sensors or such to block it. The ECU runs specific tests and looks for specific responses, all the old school tricks do is replace one CEL for another CEL, when the ECU can't see the missing cat, but knows something is wrong.

 

okay thank you I appreciate the help!