Hi, new to the board.

Is there any draw back to removing all the AIR tubes and related parts? Not that I care if emissions stuff is on the car or not, but all those damn hoses and tubes are just in my way. I'm wondering mostly becasue I was going to throw some headers on and was wondering if I should buy them for the AIR system or not.

 

Not really. Some people have complained that it blew there cat. Which is possible. I did it and had no problems, but i also took off the cat shortly afterwards.

 

with a well tuned prom, you should be able to get away with it but you would probably run into problems down the road if you simply took it off on stock tuning.

you'd never pass a visual inspection though.

 

The only thing that will suffer is the emmisions. Under normal operation, the air has no effect on the ecm. Id doesnt check for its operation, either. If your subject to full emmisions + visual, get the headers with AIR. Most come with the plumbing, anyway. The only thing that really makes the AIR system bad is all the clutter.

 

the a.i.r. tubing is designed to lean out the exhaust air to keep the cat from clogging, should it be too rich at any point. most of the time the a.i.r. isn't even running, nor is the smog pump, if i remember correctly, but it IS there for a reason. if you're not keeping track of your a/f ratio, or if your engine tells you its running rich from the start(which quite a few are), there is a potential to clog the cat in the future, that is if you don't fix the problem.

basically, if you remove the a.i.r. tubes, and intend to keep the cat, you're gonna want to keep a slightly closer eye on your engine's running specs, especially if you don't intend to do any prom tuning. if you're engines running rich codes already, you're gonna wanna fix those problems before removing the tubing. also, since you're installing headers, you're gonna wanna keep an eye on the results of the increased exhaust flow, it may cause problems, it may not.

basically what I'm saying is that many people won't have problems, but some will, so just be careful and you'll be fine.

or, you know, you could remove the cat and not have to worry about it, but I personally don't want to cause any more problems to the ozone and whatnot, so I'll be keeping the cat when I remove my tubes.

 

Isn't it possible to buy a cat to work with out AIR?
Like this one from summit:
#CTO-6907

 

a.i.r. tubing is car specific, not cat specific.

if you buy a cat without the tubing you're not going to "fix" the problem, there really isn't a problem, technically.

the a.i.r. tubing was just GM's way of making extra sure you always passed emissions, didn't clog the cat too soon after installation, and it also helped the cat get up to operating temps a bit faster.

if i remember correctly, the original replacement cats didn't even come with an air tube, you had to remove it from your old one and weld it into the new one.

the cat itself will be the same and work the same, with or without an air tube, the way the car is tuned and makes adjustments is the factor here, not the cat.

 

Gut the cat if your worried and don't have tailpipe tests in your area. I had a box full of junk about 25 pounds worth after I removed air pump, ALL brackets and air tubes to exhaust manifolds and cut tube off flush with convertor and welded hole shut. Put plugs in exhaust manifold. Removed divertor valve and all associated brackets. Looks like a different engine, well worth
the minor trouble removing this JUNK. Never had a problem with any of my three vehicles all without any air equipment. Easier to work on and look at now. Most could never tell it was done.