hey guys i have a 95 so emissions doesnt matter to me, and well just wondering if any of you have gutted the cat or not??

and if not then why not?

and if you have how did you do it?

 

if you gut the cat you will do more harm than good,if you put a pipe in its place you will not disturb the flow!

 

ok? more harm? just because it will change from a pipe to like a canester and then back into a pipe?

has anyone replaced it with a straight pipe, or gone with just a high flow cat?

also on the high flow cat, do you have to get one sde welded on?

 

I have a cat. on my one 95 T/A to pass emissions and after I test, I have a pipe I put in its place. I have flanges on both sides so it is a 5 minute change. Your better off using a pipe instead of gutting the cat. as the change in the pipe to empty cat. back to pipe will cause the exhaust flow to be disturbed on its way out.

 

no emissions+high flow cat= waste of money
The best thing to do is weld a straight pipe where the cat is. However, unless your cat is clogged, don't expect to see anything over a 5hp gain from this. The car will be a bit louder though.

 

ok so when you decided to do what you did, did you just go to a shop and just have them make flanges on the header side? and then just have them make one for the other side with the stock piping?

 

also is there a way to tell if your cat is clogged? while it is still in the car?

 

Don't gut your cat... gutted cats sound horrible... like a rattling tin can... the other guys gave you some good "idears"... try them.

 

It is illegal to remove a cat, so a lot of exhaust shops won't do it, but there are those few which will do it. I personally bolted mine (Mac offroad pipe).

You can tell if your cat is clogged by looking at it after driving for a while, and if it is glowing red, more than likely it's clogged.

Ryan

 

so there is something that will just bolt up?? i looked at my cat for a way to unbolt it but it looked like it was just welded up to the header piping

 

My Mac headers came with a flange on it, so I just bolted the Mac offroad pipe right up. On stock manifolds you would either have to weld a flange to bolt up a straight pipe or just weld the striaght pipe right to the y-pipe.

 

To tell if it is clogged, just measure the temperature of the pipe before entering and after leaving the cat. They should be the same. If it is hotter after leaving the cat, it means it is clogged.

 

I gutted mine a long time ago. With headers and a cutout, sounds pretty loud. You can really only tell the difference in sound if you have a free'er flowing exhaust system like Borla or a cutout. When it goes in a muffler, you can't really hear much of a difference. If you want to, you can always rig up a pipe inside the cat "shell", but keep in mind no muffler shop will do it (at least not openly. Some will do it if it's kept under the table!). If not, you're going to have to know someone with welding skills. Or, you can just remove the bolts on the cat and take a three foot pry bar and hit it with a hammer. When the honeycomb gets into smaller pieces, start your car and rev it a little to blow the chunks out. Then reinspect and smush anything else left. If you think it's too risky, don't even touch the cat and go buy a highflow. Heck, some of the newer style highflows were flow tested next to a straight pipe and came out flowing the same amount and still kept the air nice and clean. :blah: So it's pretty much up to how much $$ you want to shell out.

 

I unbolted the pipew that goes to my borla muffler from the cat and gutted it and it sounded like a griggin NASCAR (woohoo go Gordon!!) Anyway, I went to an exhuast shop here in town and they secretly put a straight pupe in its place, now HAIL THE ALL-MIGHTY NO-CATTED BORLA

 

I gutted my cat, it wasn't really a big deal. Just unbolt the y-pipe from the manifolds and the cat-back, and then get something and poke the crap out of the cat's internals. Make sure it's empty, then put it back on the car. I have a flowmaster cat-back, and i'd say that the gutted cat didn't make that much of a difference. It popped more on spin-down if you revved it up in neutral, but besides that it was ok. And I couldn't get the shop near my house to put in a straight pipe, so it was the best solution to a clogged cat.