I know the stock exhaust sound in general is nothing special, but as of the last half a year or so I've noticed it sounds like it's gotten progressively worse.

I'm not entirely certain what the problem might be. Clogging cat? Muffler packaging deteriorating? Occasionally as the car is completely warmed up, it seems to sound okay, but it just sounds bad; like fart can bad, even blown engine bad (I know the compression is good, if not slightly below spec).

I just got the car back from the dealership today because of its first flooding from sitting for only a couple weeks (2006 MT @ 119k miles) and started wondering about the condition of the cat because all of a sudden I now have a P0037 CEL (rear O2 sensor). Maybe it really is just the O2 sensor that went bad? Dunno at this point.

Is taking the car to a muffler shop to take off the cat and muffler to do a visual inspection a sound first step? (no pun intended) I definitely don't want to do this myself because all of the stock components have never been touched since new (lower heat shield recently fell off) and it looks like it'd be a LOT of work to dismantle.

 

It's probably your cat failing apart. When my stock exhaust tone changed the cat fell apart about 2 weeks later.

3 bolts is all you have to undo to check it.

 

it could be the cat rather it trips the o2 or not because the cat has two separate comb parts inside to make it smog friendly even if the first comb starts to fail. You could to a back pressure test and check for a clogged or the start of it clogging that way. The raspy ricer sound you are hearing is most likely because you have a good amount of miles on it and seeing as our cars exhaust runs hotter then most every other car the resonator will burn out faster. you could try changing out the midpipe for a BHR or race roots. I would stay away from the AP pipe as it will be worse off then what you have now. but whatever pipe you decide to go with make sure you change the bolts and gaskets to avoid problems down the road. hope this helps.

 

Hi
Did you fix this issue after?
Does your car sound like this?


Antony