Running No Cat in California...
 

Hey, I live in CA where Cat's are required. Now I don't know anything about taking it off, but is it fairly easy to do so, and put it back on? I kind of want to run my car with no cat for at least a day. I heard that even a V6 will sound awesome with no cat. But I'm a little afraid. Will it be that easily noticeable? Will I have a lot of exhaust smoke? Will I get pulled over (I drive to work every morning in a business district that happens to house a police district station)?

Re: Running No Cat in California...
 

THey won't notice unless they sit behind you and smell the exhaust. I don't remember if the cat is part of the y pipe or if its bolted to the y pipe. If its bolted taking it down and putting it up would be simple but you'd need a piece of pipe to finish the exhaust unless you want to be running open manifolds basically. If the cat is part of the y pipe you'd need to cut it out and weld new pipe in it's place so it wouldn't be something you can just switch around in a few minutes (unless you can weld)

Re: Running No Cat in California...
 

On my '94 z28 I gutted my cat, and you can smell it when you are behind the car or right after the car turns off walking behind it. Also I dont know about the v6's but on my car the cat is part of the y-pipe which means you would have to get a y-pipe without a cat on it or one with a gutted cat on it like mine.

Re: Running No Cat in California...
 

If you are that worried, I would instead invest in a good cat-back exhaust for some added sound and also has a C.A.R.B certification for use in Cali. Yeah, you could remove your cat, but then you will have to run some sort of 02 simulator in the rear or have the rear 02 edited out of your PCM which frankly isn't worth the money. Catalytic converters now are much more efficient now then they were twenty years ago so your actual HP gains will be minimal.

Re: Running No Cat in California...
 

I apologize, I breezed through your post without realizing your vehicle is a 94 so you are on OBD-1 standards, not OBD-II so you dont have a rear O2 sensor monitoring your catalyst activity. However, still if you remove or gut your cat and they put you on a sniffer test, I'm pretty certain you will fail.

Re: Running No Cat in California...
 

Well it doesn't look like I'll be doing it at all, sounds like more trouble than I had hoped it would be. But thanks guys, now I know a lot more about cats too! :)