My car keeps throwing me curveballs.

I was driving home from work tonight and noticed the car was sounding unusally loud. I got home, parked her and looked under the hood... everything seemed fine. However, after I cranked her up again I notice my the underside of my car was where all the sound was coming from. I took a closer look at the cat and sure enough it was showing signs of death... unusually strong smell, rattling noises from inside the cat and ecetera.

Anyway, I was planning on waiting till summer to just fully redo my exhaust with a new catback, converter muffler, headers and so on. However, I may have to rethink that plan and get a new catalytic converter... or at least a temporary one for now.

Is it dangerous to drive with a dead/damaged catalytic converter? This car is a daily driver so I need to know if I should replace it ASAP or if I can wait for a while before. I can buy a new cat now, but I was planning on buying a dual snorkel air cleaner with that money. However, if it is risky to drive with the cat like this I will go out and buy a new one.

Thanks.

 

i dont think it would be risky to drive your car with the cat being damaged the only thing you might run into is problems with noise and cops but i know alot of people that replace their cat with a straight pipe. unless it is blocking the airflow and creating too much backpressure it shouldnt hurt your car. anybody else care to comment?

 

Yeah, there is no real danger to running your car with a busted cat. If its leaking, its just loud. And if its somewhat plugged, you might lose a few horses. If its really plugged, you'll develop lots of back pressure, which will at worst actually make you lose some manifold vacuum, which possibly could make you have to push harder on your brake pedal, and maybe raise your fuel pressure at idle. But thats in an EXTREME case. I doubt yours is that bad.

 

If I were you, I'd just take the cat off and straight pipe it. The only damage that it could cause now is if it were cloged. To be safe just straight pipe it and save your money.

 

Yeah... as I was typing out this message I thought about just straight piping it. It would surely be the most cost-effective solution, and I'm sure since I've had my car it hasn't been the most "enviroment-friendly" car on the road (not that it matters in Florida anyway).

Hopefully by this weekend the cat will be gone and a pipe in its place.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

Yea, I'd either chop it off and use a section of pipe in its place, or gut it.

I'm cheap, so I gutted mine, lol.