i have the helix non-resonated ones. you will get the rasp no matter what, the smell...it's only gas =). unless you stand directly behind the car and try to sniff it out, the smell is not that bad and not that noticeble (atleast to me). Now when i add in my turbo, hell the smell doubles but i can still stand it and get use to it. it's only really noticeable on a cold start but after it warms up a little it kinda fades away. it'll give you a whole lot of power...best bang for the buck, especially when you go FI.

 

I actually am very used to the smell w/o cats... my last two cars didn't have cats (97 Supra with T-78 and 89 RX-7 TurboII). You just get used to it in a while as it is not bad at all. Besides, you can't really smell anything from inside of your car. I plan on putting on test pipes on my G in near future. Gotta love Ohio... no emissions testing!

BTW, what the hell are those people thinking? Catching on fire by smoking inside of the car? BWAHAHAHAHAHA. Man, I had to laugh at that one. Backfire? It's not like backfire is going to cause any problems if it does happen(probably not). It looks cool anyway, with flames spitting out of your exhaust

I don't know why test pipes are such a big deal in G and Z community as people remove their cats all the times. Granted, most of those are the ones with FI, but it is hard to understand why there are people who seem to hate the idea of test pipes unless they are evironmentalists

 

I would almost recommend removing the cats in forced induction. With lots of hp/tq especially on a turbo car the cats may become a restriction and if you are making enough heat you could melt the inside of the cat. Older brother has a Mustang Cobra and some of the guys running high octane and over 650rwhp where toasting their cats.

 

We just did a install this weekend of DC headers and kinetix resonated test pipes. I must say it did smoke and stink for a bit but it starts to diminish once the car reaches normal operating temperature. I must say that the power increase was very noticable, but it was running very rich. My cust. is on his way to technosquare to have the new map put in. Hopefully with his mods but the t-pipes and headers he makes decent power.