**UPDATE**

I've been a little lax on posting because of my woman keeping me busy and my buddy selling me his Hemi Truck, so needless to say I've been moonlighting with my woman and the Hemi and haven't had a ton of time to get my poor old 97 Ram Back on the road.

Last week I finally had time, so I decided to pick up where I left off. I had been talking with some people and they described the issue as almost a sure catalytic converter problem, armed with this tip I decided to bolt the intake back down and reassemble the engine. When I first had issues with the motor that caused me to be pretty much stalled I had ALMOST taken the intake off because I was assuming a blown head gasket for various reasons and wanted to unbolt get a jump on rebuilding. I then let it sit from Feb 17th to last week without touching it. I never broke the seal on the intake so I bolted it back down and reassembled everything to running order as well as gave it a tune up with new plugs cap, rotor & wires.

Then I turned my attention to the catalytic converter and to see if it was plugged. I tapped on it and it rattled, so then I got out the sawsall and cut the center of the Y pipe and just behind the rear 02 sensor and took the converter out as a unit. Upon inspection, I noticed that 2 pieces of the converter honey comb were clogged in BOTH sides of the Y pipe and that an extreme amount of converter dust was coming out as I shook it. Complete converter failure. So then I took a wooden broom handle & punched out the remaining converter honey comb and shook it out numerous times till I felt there was not much if anything to clog it again. I then put it back on the truck & put my shorty headers I had sitting around on the truck.

Here are the results of my work after unclogging the converter & installing headers....


It runs great, runs cool & has damn good power for a 360, even considering the fact I've been driving my Red 05 Hemi Ramble Bee around.

 

So it was the cat being plugged! Glad ya stopped when ya got to the manifold lol, wouldnt that have been no good to pull the heads andsee the gaskets still intact...

Hows she sound with the gutted cat?

 

It is illegal to run without cats-not sure what year that kicked in and if it is so in all states-(gutting cats has been done for some time) adds less restriction and gives a small amount of power increase-to stay legal you can look into some higher flow performance cats-

 

if you just gut it as he did it looks like its still there only way to know its gone is to get e tested

 

We don't have emissions testing in my city or county, I'm in Wisconsin and I think only Milwaukee County has any kind of testing.

I didn't gut the cat to get power, I gutted it so the truck would run lol it was completely clogged, the power from gutting it is just a bonus.

As for the sound after punching the cat out, she sounds pretty good, but I have a leak on my passengers side header that I need to fix so all I hear is a bit of ticking. I don't think its measurably louder than before. My Hemi Truck is overall louder than my 97 Ram (especially when turning 5500+ Rpm), but the 97 Ram rumbles more at idle.

The truck never had a problem turning the tires over, but it seems like it takes less effort and revs easier since installing my shorty headers, and it has a better high end. I did a stop light to stop light race with a retired Police Crown Vic and took him by 2 truck lengths and could have pulled harder had it been a real race...5500lbs vs a 3400lb police car I thought was impressive for a old 360 with 187,000 on it.

I just gutted the cat, I didn't want to mess around with moving my o2 sensors around & creating a nightmare. If I had to put a cat back on I wouldn't be crushed, she still hauled *** and sounded pretty close. The loudness difference is probably only in the 5 to 10% range from cat to no cat but I'd have to drive the truck more.

 

Top Gear U.S. recently tested out each of the Big 3's new model police car, they at first tested the old Crown Vics against a mini van in a high speed pursuit, the mini van won easily...

 

Not to be a downer but the increased powerr was from removing a clogged cat That wasn't functioning not just from gutting it

 

I have no doubts that helped haha. What about my shorty headers that were supposed to be 16-18 dyno proven whp? those didn't help? :P



Just look at those bad boys, the looks alone had to have increased power to at least over 300hp! haha.

The truck actually always ran great until the night the converter got clogged & started choking itself to death which basically happened all in the matter of an hour and a half. I always outran other comparable 2nd Gen Rams with this truck so the converter being plugged happened suddenly, sure the converter insides may have been loose for a while but the actual plugging that caused all my power loss problems happened in one night.

After putting headers on and unclogging the cat the biggest improvment I've noticed is in the high end power, she climbs VERY well on the highway compared to before, but it still feels like the same truck to me, always snappy & consistent.

 

Yep I feel the same way. My truck is stock, engine wise. And it's always had plenty of power.

Now you just need to geta custom or aftermarket y pipe and it will actually let you open the headers up!