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My '92 Vert has been sparingly used lately, but still has 141K miles on it. I, like several others last fall, put the Corsa exhaust system on it, so I take it out to give it a good "listen". The last couple of days, I notice in the lower gears, if I let it throttle down, it will backfire, which is something it's not done in the 3 years I've had the car. All my manuals got damaged in the flood that hit us on 12 July. What should I check out first?
If you have the A.I.R. (air injection reaction) system on your car it could be one of the control valves, also known as a diverter valve, or 'gulp' valve. To reduce emissions, air is pumped into the exhaust system. On deceleration, the diverter valves are supposed to close that off. If one of those valves isn't doing it's job you'll get a back fire out the exhaust on deceleration.
The CAT could have been affected last November when the new Exhaust was put on... do not know about the Fuel Filter, it's got about 10k miles on it, but almost 3 years.
Sounds like that is what is happening. Know of a good quick check?
If you're talking to me about the A.I.R., the way to check is simply disconnect the air hoses going to the exhaust manifolds at the easiest place, start it and give the accelerator a few jabs. If it backfires when hooked up and doesn't when it's not, that's it. Hook up one side, then the other. It should start to backfire when the side with the faulty valve is hooked up.