'93 Civic VX Smog woes..
Two years ago, I bought a '93 Civic VX. It has been a great little car. Until I had to get it smogged.
The car passed emissions (barely), but smog tech found a second cat on the underbody of the car and failed it for a modified exhaust system.
I went to install a new cat only to find that the normal bolt on doesn't fit in the exhaust manifold and my only option was to buy a $700. The shop tech offered to swap the exhaust manifold but he was told by the supplier that doing that would also violate the modified exhaust rules. So I had the second cat removed and did a pretest, now it fails on all counts. Worse yet, the pre-tester says I have a non-standard JDM engine and I have to make an appointment with the referee.
I made sure before I bought the car that the engine had VTEC-E stamped on the top of it, and I assumed (apparently incorrectly) that that meant it had the correct VX engine.
Now I read on the forums that it's common to hollow out the engine cat and put on the underbody cat, so I really might not have a functioning cat at all.
A couple of questions:
1. How can I confirm whether or not my engine is the right engine? I know they have model numbers, but where are they stamped?
2. What the heck can I do to get this car to pass smog?
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