A man's car can be a reflection of his personality, especially if the ride is customized. But for those to-be speed devils out there, freeing that horse is not that expensive most of the time. An inexpensive way to give that engine a little horsepower upgrade is by modifying the vehicle's exhaust system.

Commonly the exhaust system of factory cars are small in diameter and are designed to produce less noise and emission. With this stock design, it may tend to choke on the back pressure and lose that precious horsepower. An exhaust system upgrade is not only changing the mufflers which what is commonly referred to as exhaust. It is an upgrade that starts with the engine manifold to the catalytic converter unto the mufflers.

Headers

There are two types of aftermarket header upgrades; the long header and the short header. The long header is effective and commonly used in long distance racing or driving. This type of header has a longer design and makes the exhaust air travel much further to the catalytic converter. The other type of header is the short header. This has a shorter pipe length but gives you instant engine boost and horsepower at lower engine RPM's. This type of header is suitable for drag racers and street racers since they need constant boost on sharp corners to get ahead.

Catalytic Converters

Catalytic Converter or the Cat Back is the one that filters the exhaust fumes and sound produced by the engine. It has been tried and tested that removing the Cat Backs may give you a boost by about 20% of the stock engine horsepower. Removing the catalytic converters may be a can of worms for the tuner, hence this may cause the polluted fumes to escape through the exhaust system and the engine may not pass the government standard for engine emission testing. In the United States of America, it is illegal to remove catalytic converters on cars and the penalties may be imprisonment or the car can be impounded by the authorities.

These are just minor but crucial engine upgrades that can be done by your neighborhood car shop. Before doing any actual upgrades, just check with your parts distributor for advice since different types of engine may need different types of parts. Wrong combination of parts may choke the exhaust system and may downgrade the performance or even damage your engine.