Okay i have the 2002 stratus se 2.4 dohc motor.


I want to upgrade the exhaust..........but I cant have a ricey,obnoxious,growling, purring exhaust. But that's neither here nor there. My question is this. What is the biggest exhaust pipe I can use before I start to lose power? Would a 3" pipe be to big? Any help would be nice

 

if youre going catback only, you could have 6 inch conduit from the convertor, straight out the back and it wont make any difference. i know that on my RT i have three cats, and you probably have at least two. those provide alot of backpressure on their own, so any losses from increased size wil be very minimal...
what is the stock size?

 

it's pretty large stock. Im guessing that it's 2.25" I havent measured yet. My exhaust only has 1 cat. But it has 2 mufflers.
Most likely gonna use a high flow cat & 1 muffler, but what pipe size should i use?

 

i wouldnt go bigger than 2.5". are you certain that there isnt one cat right off of the exhaust manifold, then one under the car, then a resonator, then a muffler?

 

Okay My exhaust goes as follow's

Exhaust manifold
4"-6" of pipe
Cat converter
3'-4' of pipe
small muffler (looks like a really small muffler rough guess demensions are 9"x5"x3")
2'-3' of pipe
Finally the muffler


Now that i have looked at the actually exhaust piping. It's very large I would say it already is 2.25 maybe 2.5"

 

hmm..thats interesting..i thought that they added more cats to the newer 4 cyls. that actually works out better for you!

that small muffler is probably a resonator. I have two of them inline right after my cat, and i have been told that if you get them out, it really kicks up the exhaust volume, but my car is very loud now.

but as for the size, say you went to 3" catback, i dont think that it would gain or lose you much over the 2.5", you would just be paying more per foot to have it bent.