96civic

I have a 1996 honda civic dx. I was told that the cat coverter is going bad and needs replace. any how, I was thinking of buying a performance header for my car. the problems is, that my cat converter in right in the middle of my header. questions #1 how many cat converters are in my car? or how can I tell how many do I have and second if I were to replace my existing header, were would I place the cat converter if there is only one. the cat converter is $342 plus install, I am willing to spend a couple of hundread and give some power to my car. and or even put a new exhaust, if I can, but I really have no idea, how to do this or where to look. please help

b16ahybrid

Buy a header and a high flow cat, take it to a muffler shop and they can modify your exhaust so the cat is after the header. make sure you get a true highflow cat and not a resinator. A lot of "performance shops" like to sell straight through resinators as cats. Those are not legal, and most (legit) shops will not install that inplace of a cat.
A highflow cat should run you about $60- $80 and a header will run $200+ depending on the quailty and style. Put the header on yourself (to save cash) and have the muffler shop do the cat, it shouldn't cost more then about $60 to have them put the cat on (welding included).