Cat converter cutaway - *pics

Between the cylinder head ports & the resonator sits this crime against Thunderbirds. It's bad enuff that the ports look like sumthin' from a Lawnboy and the resonator from a Yugo but this adds insult to injury.

Before bustin' the tubular section apart I looked through them and saw sumthin' that looked like a perfectly square block buried inside. Started breakin' it into pieces and found that the tubes in one area were deformed as shown in the lower pic. Looks like a Job #1 boo-boo...

Factory cats are comin' off everything I own.

'bird

Overall view when it's first opened up, the black bands on the section to the right are actually a folded screen stuffed with edges of the insulation. Most of the insulation and palladium are missing in this pic (knocked off when I opened it) but some can still be seen on the section to the left. Inlet & outlet are 1-7/8" diameter.



This view shows the tubes that our exhaust passes through. This stuff is pretty brittle, ceramic in nature and breaks pretty easily. The dark funnel-shaped spot near the center of the pic is the defect I mentioned.

Dude, get back to work on those exhaust pipes. I want some.

hah. I pulled my cats off because one blocked the outlet. Other than noisy because of the flex pipe being used, I haven't noticed a big change yet. But I haven't wrung it out yet either.

Thanks for all the inside looks. Just watch those fingers!

nice, what else can you cut apart. You must have been really bored lately, been cutting up lots of stuff.

cut a stock lower intake manifold its incredible how they bolck the flow thru those

dont the cats make a noise when they go bad? i thought i heard that some where i have a rattle like a heat sheild when i drive it sounds like its on the driver side where the cat is but i ripped the heat sheild off burning the bolts off the manifold so i dont think its the heat shield.
by the way hope ya dont mind jumping on your post

hmmmm... strange - I broke apart my 89 SC cats and they didn't have that black crap in them...

shouldn't rattle when it goes bad. If you start to get some nice sulfur smelling exhaust then they are bad.

So when you gut these things out it's basically breaking up the crap inside and dumping it out? I'm going to eliminate mine. No inspections here.

YA i dont know what i was thinking its defently a heat sheld some where i just gota figure out wich one it is i remember gutting the cats on my old s-10 that we put a 350 in that was fun ive been debating about gutting my cats but im nervous aboiut that tinny sound you guys say comes when ya do that

Originally posted by MTTod
So when you gut these things out it's basically breaking up the crap inside and dumping it out? I'm going to eliminate mine. No inspections here.

Click to expand...

Yep, that's all there is to it.

Originally posted by MTTod
So when you gut these things out it's basically breaking up the crap inside and dumping it out? I'm going to eliminate mine. No inspections here.

Click to expand...

Yep, that's all there is to it. I intend to bypass them completely with 2- 1/4" aluminized pipe.

'bird

Thanks for pictures. I am gonna try doing it. Just cause I can.