well I noticed my car now has an exhaust leak coming from the pass side. My prob is I dont tend to stay in one spot long enough (except when Im sleeping) for the car to cool down enough so I can pinpoint this leak but as far as I can tell it's somewhere inbetween the cat and the exhaust manifold (could actually be the manifold itself) I'm planning to check it out on my next day off, and unfortunately I dont know when that is yet. But of out sheer curiousity, would having more back pressure on one side than the other affect the motor in any way? I know (n/a) hondas w/no back pressure = loss of power and burned valves if you drive like my friends (haha) it doesnt sound like it's doing bad but then again, neither did my friend's honda who just did a swap cuz he didnt want to tear it down.

Your biggest problem is that an exhaust leak before the O2 sensor will make the fuel mix go rich.

 

Your second biggest problem is that your car's gonna sound like schize.

It is running rich- Im getting about 20mpg steady instead of 26

 

And for some reason my car doesnt actually sound like there's a leak, this is why it went unnoticed til I went to grab something from the glove box with the car on. It's mildly louder than it should be not anything really noticeable to anyone not looking for it. It's super quiet like it should be when it's idling, but once you hit the 3500+ rpms it gets loud, and not a horrible rattling/I broke it loud either.

But I *should* have tomorrow off so I'm gonna hope I can look at it then.