do you need the cats

[thebetterman]

has anyone just taken their cats off and put in straight pipes or is it even possible to do?

------------------
1992 Silver MTX
Completely Stock

 

[89 Gary]

You can (I did) just take a large screwdriver (or hockey stick in Canada) and simply "bust" through the insides pretty easy. Of course, here in Mass. they passed a much stricter emission test (hello California) and in no way shape or form can it pass with anything but functional cats. If you have aftermarket high flow cats you will lose basically NO hp loss. And, with those on my 89 (Catco-I got thru Summit) your emissions will be as good as stock. Mine this year were frightening LOW-the "inspector" couldn't believe it. Good luck with the puck!

 

[thebetterman]

we don't worry about emmissions up here on the praries of Canada. **** my snowmobile probably makes so much emmissions that it would make your inspectors cry. Long live the two stroke

------------------
1992 Silver MTX
Completely Stock

 

[SHOnuff93]

I have removed my cats by replacing the entire y-pipe with a cat-less y-pipe from the SHOshop, i like this one alot, not even much louder than stock, and if u have to pass an emissions test just swap the stocker back in, it took me an hour and a half to do the swap, and this was in the parking lot of my college with ony my craftman socket set a pair of vice grips and a crescent wrench

 

[olympic]

Some people say that you lose low RPM torque but gain HP up top without the cats. It's because the SHO supposedly needs some backpressure for the torque.

 

[centaurus3200]

read the post "the atrocity that is the sho exhaust" it's very informative and listen to ted b. he knows so much about cars it's quite inspiring.

backpressure is the wrong term. you lose torque when the exhaust velocity slows down too much (why you should use the smallest diameter piping that DOES NOT increase backpressure). no cats shouldn't hurt torque. just don't use big ass piping on top of it.

also, hallowing out the cats would hurt performance i would think. it creates a jagged mess in there, not very streamlined.

see ya,
Robby

 

[Diameg]

We'll see how the performance aspect goes on my car.
That sounds like a lot of work, taking it off, jamming something in there to destroy the cats.
The approach I am taking (against my wishes) is to have at least one plug not working, which in turn is spewing raw gas in there to burn the cats and the rest of my exhaust up.

Yup....that's my approach (groan).