I live in an area where smog is of no concern. I'm thinking about
running straight-pipe, though i've heard that this can cause probs
as there is no back pressure in the exhaust system which can cause
"ses" lights and poor performance. Has anyone done this and what
was the results. Any ideas or advice is appreciated.

 

definitely don't want to pollute the environment..i myself hate being behind
cars or busses spewing exhaust, i do have a pcm tune and from what i've heard guys have cleared smog w/no cats due to the leaning out the A/F mix...but think i'll go with the cats...tks

 

Cats are for tree hugging hippies. it may not be worth the trouble to go without in some states not to mention the laws against touching them etc.

 

Cats are for tree hugging hippies. it may not be worth the trouble to go without in some states not to mention the laws against touching them etc.
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so if I am concious about my actions and what they do to my neighbors air quality and the quality of my kids' surroundings then I am a tree huggin hippe?????? wow thanks for enlightening me oh wise one

 

Explain then how a car can fail an emissions test (sniffer up the tail pipe) with no cats, but then fail again even worse WITH them?! How much do they really do other than rob horsepower??

I know this because I had that happen with my '81 Z28 ... AND it just happened recently to my buddy's LT1 that had LTs and an off-road Y-pipe. Cats are useless IMO, and the power they draw IS noticeable.

 

Stop being a wuss. You dont belong on the internet, you belong at a protest. It was just a joke. Did you not read the rest? I'm going to remove the cats off all my cars just for you kids and the surrounding. I can do that since Im the wise one.

 

cats suck..Im a dog person myself.




Ditch the cats!

 

What year car do you have, is it a 96-02? I'm guessing by the "cat(s)" in the title that you have a dual cat car. If you remove them, you will get an SES light so you would need to have them tuned out of your PCM. Otherwise, there are no other side effects other then a little extra power and noise.

 

It's a 97 SS, so yes dual cats...I just had my tune done by pcm4less, I can ignore the "ses" light until I do further upgrades and have the tune reflashed. There's no smog check where i'm at.

 

I know this is going to disagree with alot of comments that were made.. I took the cats off my 93 camaro and it sounded alot better and ran better too, but that was because it was clogged before, but my friends 92 z28 had a straight pipe and ran a 13.7 and he put a cat on it and it ran a 13.6 so i dont know. but if you take the cat off it will sounded better thats all i know.

 

^ ^ ^ 1/10th in the 1/4 mile because of REMOVING the cat??

...dude, I've run from 13.02 to 14.12 with my car, same mods, same track, different day. A tenth of a second means he learned to drive "a little better".

 

If you dont have to pass emissions I would ditch them just to avoid a potential problem such as one failing or clogging up. A failure of a cat could potentially lead to warped heads if you dont catch the problem right away. The smell isnt bad at all, i actually kind of like it and i have never been told i smell like exhaust
There are alot of people in my area that run no cats, and the environment around here seems to be doing as good as ever
Just my honest opinion.

 

I've run my car both with cats and without, and I think the cats robbed a little power up top, but i can feel a noticable increase in torque with the cats.

 

Funny, the torque was the first thing I noticed missing from my '81 when I put the cats on ... pulled it out of the shop, got on the road and punched it, and I was like "WTF is wrong with my car?!?!" I had a 383 stroker that was naturally torquey, and the cats neutered it!!

 

There is a volcano in the congo that spews more greenhouse emissions in a day than Ney York does in a year. If you'd like to save the planet and environment, protest those damn volcanoes!!

Remove the cats. you'll be happy.