SS isn't stainproof, just resistant.

If you have a lower grade stainless heat willdiscolor it. A catalytic converter's sole purpose is to take noxious fumes produced during combustion and convert them to less poisonous and toxic byproducts. Do a search for gutted CATs on the forum and you'll find a few that have tried it and what it did to their exhaust tips. I wouldn't do it personally,but to each his own. Just don't claim you weren't warned.

 

Well I'd definately like to go the forced induction route as some point (cold air intake kit), and I will soon be having some longtube headers installed on the truck, topped off with a performance chip. ...Final question, should I gut the cat or not? The tips are stainless steel, and the tips were not cheap, so I assume they are of a highgrade material. I love the sound of the flowmaster tone, so I do not want to remove the muffler, but just want to kind of add a little more of that "hollow" sound by gutting the cat. My performance mechanic has had NO cats on his mustang for 3 years and his tips seem to be just fine. I also am a clean freak, so I'd be on keeping care of them (I dont know if that would makea differance or not). Input as of yet has been nice fellas

 

If you already have a highflow cat I'd just leave it alone. You're going to lose performance.

 

[sm=youreright.gif]

i 2nd that.

 

That's not forced air induction. Forced air induction means supercharging it (or turbo charging it if you felt so compelled for some reason). Cold air intakes are a step in the right direction though.

I'd go that route as well. If you're really hard up to destroy something that works perfectly fine have the guy gut your mufflers. Maybe run a straight pipe through the middle and just have the muffler there for visual effect. that might be kind of hard if there's an offset between the inlet and the outlet though, but I'm sure your mechanic could think of something.

 

i gutted the cat on my 90 4runner just unbolted the thing and took a 2foot by 1inch drill bit and drilled right through everything. the honecomb and steelwire got caught on the bit and ripped everything out. it did make it a tad louder but i didnt feel ant loss or gain of power. i would also say stick with your HF cat.

 

You will not lose power by gutting your cat. Most tests that I have seen show a 4-8 hp gain. I ran a gutted cat when mine went bad andI was waiting on my headers to be shipped (wasn't going to pay the shop twice). I lost no power. I was not recording mpg's at the time. I didn't care for the sound at idle. Enviromentally speaking, cats become almostworthless in a short period of time as compared to the life of a vehicle.

 

When my cat went bad, I removed it and replaced it with a 3" pipe - hey the cat had a 3" inlet anyway - andthe Mopar Perf 3" (Borla?) system.Retained the factory manifolds for the sleeper look - 92's had 2 1/4 outlets, 93's & up had 2". ('92 Dakota ext cab 4X4/ 5.2 Magnum, MP cam & roller t-chain, custom filled & flowed intake w/ports matched, ported & flowed heads with 2.02/1.84 valves, Crower 1.7:1 roller rockers. Ran great - noisey, but fast. Lost a little city mileage &bottom-end grunt, butthe top end was great and picked up .5-.75 mpg highway. Could go head tohead w/ the 5.0's. God, I miss thattruck!

 

I'm still torn here though fellas, I am getting some awfully mixed responses here. I am just looking for something cheap that will louden up the exhaust, I don't really care about trying to gain h/p or anything, because either way it won't do anything notable in the h/p category. Will gutting the cat hollow up my flowmaster muffler noticably? I like the sound of the Flowmaster Super 44 muffler, so I don't want to touch it. The cat actually was more, but it isn't the instrument that's making the noise. I plan to buy headers for the truck soon, so I know that will free up more air, hence more noise, but for now, the cheapest thing to tickle my fancy would be gutting the cat. If you guys dont think itd be worth it though, I wont do it. I'll only do it if it's going to make a noticable louder noise, that's all I am looking for at the moment. The cold air intake, longtube headers and performance chip will come later!

 

It'll be louder, but, IMO, the sound isn't as clean. It's hard to describe what I'm talking about. At idle and low rpm's, mine sounded like it had a ill formed, oversizedresonator on it. That was with a gutted Magnaflow high flow cat.The cat I am running now would probably sound a lot better hollowed out as it's diameter isn't a whole lot bigger than the pipe going into it and it has ~ a 3/4" hole running down the center anyway. I would say if you are just after loud go for it, and if you want a sound that is loud and good wait and see what the headers do for you.