So we replaced the exhaust on my gf's 96 ex starting with a cat-back from Magnaflow. Worked beautifully, then I ordered a random tech bolt on free flow cat and got a generic header cuz of the budget. We bolted on the header and random tech cat 2 nights ago and there are some issues I wanted to see if any of you had ideas for.

The issues are that the cat doesn't really seal well with the header though today I took the car to a vw performance shop local to my girls house in LI and they retightened the bolts and shortened them to pull the cat closer to the header. However, since we've changed the header and cat, it seems that the combination has pushed the cat-back further back and causes it to vibrate especially loud at 2k rpm's where it's apprantly hitting the heatshield. So, my options are-

1) The shop said I basically need to short my exhaust by 1in, and since the cat-back and cat are warrantied pieces, I asked them to do it on the header, the owner isn't sure if he can but on mon he's gonna take a look at it and see what he can do.

2) reinstall the factory header and just either run that or save and get a DC Sport or something.

Opinions?

I also noticed that the random tech unit does not have hangers welded on like the stock cat, is that a problem?

 

could u cut away the bit of the heat sheid where its vibrating?

 

The portion that's hitting the heatshield is the rear s-bend right before the axle-back section so the heatshield is pressed as far back onto the body as it can be already.