2012 Nissan Altima 2.5 mod gone wrong!

Welcome back to the blog!

Here comes my first mod that I did to my 2012 Nissan Altima and it was of course what every other newbie does to his/her car and which is the cat-back swap. Before going in to the details, let me tell you that it was 2.5 litre in-line 4 cylinder engine with 175 rated HP. It was taking all exhaust inputs from exhaust manifold into single catalytic converter and after wards it was Y-exhaust meaning it was having dual cat-backs, very rare for 4-cylinder car right 😎? Here is the diagram for the exhaust system of 2012 Nissan Altima.

This exhaust setup is good enough for better mileage and probably good for emissions as well (to trick someone 😁) but its horrible when it comes to making good sound note from the engine, coupled with the CVT transmission, the sound note even with the best of the best exhaust systems sounds horribly low and bad to the ears 😞

Here is the whole process of swapping cat-back on my Altima. First of all the choice of cat-back, it was Magnaflow straight through 4' street series cat-back. Since it was only cat-back, custom piping had to be done to get it installed. Here is the cat-back picture.

First and foremost, the car was put on rails for loosening the bolts of down-piping to release the cat-backs from its hinges and mid-pipe hook. This part is easy, just loosening of bolts. 

Check out the stock exhaust tips! 

The car on the assembly line, since it was pretty local shop. The assembly line is not a professional one. The stock exhaust removed from the car. The custom down-pipe and cat-back itself can be seen.

Half way through the replacement...! tick tok tick tok...

woala..! after the cat-back installation and test run. Coming to the title of the post, you'd be wondering where it went wrong. In reality, the whole idea was a disaster. There was absolutely no gain in the car power, at least nothing that I felt 😏. It sounded like a hippo who hasn't eaten in ages 😒 and the hum in the cabin was beyond what my mind could  withstand 👽. I kept the mod on for approximately six months after which I felt my hearing starting to lose its sanity.

Below is the eye-to-eye comparison of before and after.

Let me have your thoughts about this and let me know your experiences about cat-back mod. 

See you next time around, till then, xplora_out!