Ok.... its beeen awhile since i have been on here, been busy being the neighborhood mechanic in my free time, but ive decided to put there projects on hold and finish up the neon so i can send it off to paint, and be done with it until it gets wrecked again.

So my question today is about my catalytic converter, and if it would rob me alot of horsepower if i where to punch out the internals, cause im thinking its getting a little clogged and i dont feel like buying a new one since its not a daily driver and its not under warranty, ive done this on my my chevy but that was a high hp 350, and i had dual flowmasters for some back pressure, and i tottaly removed it off my 4runner witch is a 2.7 liter 4 cylinder and it is header into 2.5" pipe into a one in two out flowmaster 44 series that i welded a cap onto one of the out ports to regain back pressure, and i dont even notice a low end power diff after i did that, but i read in alot of places that alot of smaller engines will suffer on low end with the cat punched out cause it looses alot of back pressure, so now im lost on what im going to do with it, any advice would be great.

 

Since it looks like you don't have to pass the sniffer, I would do it and leave a muffler on and keep the stock piping for back pressure. It's always a good thing to let the engine breathe.