What's the downside?

[E1 v2]

I have a Y pipe with a dead set of cats - Disintegrated - not fixable.

I'm thinking about cleaning out what little is left in the "Bubbles" where the cats once were and using the Y pipe for an off road pipe.

Would there be any downside, performance wise, from stock? Any performance INCREASE? Could they flow almost as good as a straight pipe?

All else equal, would this "empty pipe", with a tune,
be able to outperform the stock cats?

Opinions on this thought, please.

 

[St Louis SHO]

I know for a fact, you will lose a "little" low end, prolly not noticable. On the other hand it will breath much better up high. Can you guys use an o2 sim for the rear bank? If so, I say go for it and do some nast, nasty shit with a v-8 car.....

- James - - Hopefull Gen 3 owner soon.

 

[Silvapain]

Tuning should fix the low end torque loss. The only issue will be that the exhaust flow will slow down in the much larger empty cat volume, then have to speed up again. That disrupts the flow and also causes heat loss that can create pressure stacking in the exhaust. That said, I run a gutted third cat

The SCT tuner can disable the downstream HO2 sensors.

 

[Silvapain]

I should add that straight pipes would be better than gutted cats.