I've got a buddy in my local car club and he is considering removing the cats in his Y-pipe. He's planning on cutting the Cats out and welding in straight pipes. My question is can he do this? I mean of course he can do it, but will he have any mechanical problems. Secondly would he need O2 sims even though his bungs and O2's would be untouched. I've got a 95 and could answer these questions for the 93-95 models, but I'm not sure about the 96-97 models with OBDII and the extra cats. Thanks guys.

 

First off, if he isn't heavily modified he's wasting his time. If he puts pipes in place of the cats, the sniffer police gona get his ***. The first thing they do is visual.

If he guts them, there can be a loss of performance do to the sudden expansion of gases in the larger area of the cat and then the sudden compression back to pipe diameter.

If he still does it, he will get a SES light for efficiency of the cats. Then he will need O2 sims. These worked great for my 99 Z71: http://www.o2simulator.com/

I fried the cat and on my truck (1998 body style) the cats are welded together on one flange, they were over $500. So gutthem and sims it is. We don't have emissions testing in southern Virginia.

 

We don't have emissions in Michigan either. He's not going so much for performance, but more for sound. Depending on how much the sims are he may just want to go with a cutout. Less work and less money.

 

No cats will make it louder and should give him some extra horses. Stock cats are very restricting.

 

Many people have said the sound is terrible when they gutted the cats.

The sim I posted was only $25.00 for a dual channel unit.