… or how I neutered the beast
When even Sam found the new Civic embarrassingly loud, it was pretty clear that I needed to do something about it. So I ordered myself a new back box of ebay (along with donut gasket) for £61. It arrived today and I spent a happy couple of hours taking off the old exhaust, and fitting the new one.
The noisy, ASBO inducing, back box had obviously only been fitted fairly recently (within a year or so?) and the two bolts joining the back box to the middle section came off quite easily, although the sizes of the two flanges didn’t quite match and it had been fixed together with a bit of brute force and ignorance. And subsequent research has suggested that the two sections should be joined with spring bolts (rather than just bolts) so I may get a couple of them and re-fit at a later date.
Anyway, the new back box went on without too much fuss and the vehicle is now running in stealth mode (well, not exactly, but it is a lot, lot quieter.) I think I will also put the original resonator box back on, I think it will make it quieter still and probably run a little cleaner (and better) as it will be drawing in cold air, as designed. But before I can do that, I need to get some replacement bolts (the original bolts that bolt the resonator box to the car have vanished) and a new, standard, air filter. But these are jobs for when we return from Italy. But in the meantime, I’m a happy hector who enjoyed his work this morning, and now has a car that won’t wake the dead, or scare the natives.