My catalytic converter is shot. I was wondering if there would be any performance issues if i simply removed it, and ran a pipe instead? JUST WONDERING HERE....I KNOW IT IS REQUIRED TO HAVE ON THERE, SO PLEASE NO LECTURES ABOUT THE LAW! THANKS!

My personal experience with this "expreriment" was :
louder, almost annoying- sounded like something was broken
foul smelling exhaust
no noticeable performance gain

I installed a Magnaflow direct replacement hi-flow converter and it sounds, smells and performes better than stock. Like I said this was experience with it- hope it helps.

I had a 90 bird with a 3.1 V6 and my buddy had an 89 with a 2.8V6. This is a BAD move...

BOTH of our cars ran SLOWER without the cat. I'm not gonna say for sure why because the whole back pressure issue is a little fuzzy for me. All I can say is that they both ran better with a stock V8 converter that was welded in place of the plugged V6 one.

Good luck!

i have never run my six without one. but removing the one off of my 5.7L GTA was somthing i wish i had not done. it smells bad. realy bad....

wow not the answers i was expecting, i really appreciate the info

Yeah, removing something that outflows our maximum flow potential doesn't gain you anything.

i have a 91 rs camaro 3.1 w/o my CAT, runs great, sounds good, very loud, noticed +5-10 hp but i do also have a honda racing muffler on the back, u know, the fart cannon... anyways, u can hear me from 6 blocks away.

lol fart can = same thing as one of the sherry bomb mufflers.i.e glasspack

hey danked, good to see you on TGO. so about this 10-15HP, do you have any dyno numbers to back that? have you ever dynoed your car? or are you going by the "butt dyno" ("feels" faster, so i guess it is). just because your car feels faster to you does not mean that it is. it is the "placebo" effect. it is the same reason people claim HP gains from "the tornado" or leafblower superchargers. they get in the car and turn the key expecting to feel a difference, so they do. no dissrespect to you, this happens to all of us, i know it has happened to me. but i actualy have numbers to show, so i know how fast my cars are not.

if there was a gain it is more likley a gain from the glasspack "fartcannon" muffler (reducing restrictions in flow), or the removal of a clogged catalitic converter. if your cat was functioning properly it was not restricting your flow at all (unless it was an old stock one, those suck, even new).

BTW do you have any pics with the new hood on yet? i want to see what that bad boy looks like with the z-28 hood on it.

I gutted the cat on my '89 with no problems what-so-ever. I gutted it rather than remove it so if the smog police got too nosey, the car would appear legal. I didn't notice a performance gain but it wasn't louder or smellier.

How a car runs slower without the cat is beyond me, and don't give me that "the engine needs backpressure BS", there is plenty of backpressure without the cat! I have no emissions equipment on my car and it runs great with no codes.

Well, I know my car had the stock cat and muffler from 1987 on it, both plugged beyond belief. There was hardly any exhaust at all coming from the tailpipes, most of it was coming from the holes in the cat and side of the muffler.

I had the cat chopped off, and a new Dynomax muffler put on, and it was like a night and day difference. (Also had O2 sensor changed)

So, I guess you will see an improvement if you have old, plugged stock crap, but not much if at all with a still functional cat.