For some time now, I’ve been looking for an exhaust for the Civic, but nothing came up that was either something I wanted or a good deal at the time. I had kept the stock exhaust, but painted it matte black so I didn’t have to look at the rusty metal in my pictures anymore. I had considered a couple of cat back option and some axle back ones.
The Yonaka cat back in matte black was one that floated in my mind for a bit. I like the low tone and that it came in matte black instead of a chrome or polish finish. The exhaust looks like it was fashioned after the APEXi World Sport exhaust that also came in polished or black finishes. There happened to be a Black Friday sale for them so I got it at $250 which is pretty cheap for a cat back exhaust. It was listed at out of stock at the time, but after my inquiry, they said they would just have it as back order.
The box came in about a week later in a single box and packed up pretty well. They threw in some Yonaka merchandise like a shirt, hat, and a license plate frame. I like that bonus.
Here is it laid out and the finished was very nice.
All the hard was included as well.
The muffler is slightly smaller than the stock, but the tip is also much larger and protrudes out more.
The hangers are slightly different from the stock. They attached them to the muffler section instead of the mid section.
The hanger in the mid section were by far the worst part of fitment. The hangers sat two inches too far back so I had to bend them back to barely fit the hangers on. This isn’t exactly a new item on the market so you’re expect a bolt-on to be just bolt-on.
As you can see, the hangers were bent back two inches or so and the hangers have a slight twist.
The stock mid section is one piece, but on the Yonaka, it’s two pieces so the flange was hitting the heat shields. It was simple fix as I just pushed back that part of the shield. The exhaust has a good amount of vibrations so clearance is important unless you want to hear a constant rattling.
The second point of contact was the end-link hitting. I never had this issue before since the diameter of the piping before and smaller. I tried to adjust the hanger and much as possible and then I was focus to shave down the bolt as much as I could without compromising the fastener. Months later, it still rattles every once in a while.
Wrapping this up with a couple of shots afterwards.
All in all, it’s a decent sounding exhaust, but at the same time, all the stuff I had to do to “bolt-on” this exhaust was ridiculous. Honestly, I wouldn’t really recommend this product due to the poor design and quality by Yonaka and should have been fixed ages ago considering this is not a new item. Also, I’m sure they are aware of this because I wrote an honest review on this website and they deleted my less than stellar review regarding all the issues I ran into.
mastergrade 