Cats out-finally

[Alfonso Gomez]

A couple of months ago, I had my car inspected at a government-sanctioned facility in order to get an inspection certificate that would enable me to get the license sticker for my car. This has to be done every year. In spite of having no pre-cats, the emissions were very low and the car passed with flying colors. Today I worked up my nerve and had a muffler shop remove my main cat converter. It takes some nerve because the fine for removing the emission control devices is $500 for the car owner and up to $5,000 for the shop owner.
I immediately noticed a louder growl under acceleration but it's quiet at idle. Seat of the pants say more power, which is fine.
The cat had a small diameter tube that ran from the cat to somewhere in the engine compartment.
The shop owner removed the cat, welded in a piece of pipe, drilled a small hole in the pipe and then welded the small diameter tube to the hole in the pipe. Is this OK? He says he has done this in different cars with no problem. Is he taking me for a ride or what?

 

[Hrtbeat1]

should be fine

One of the goobers that owned my car before me hacked up the exhaust on mine. They just welded the tube closed. That tube runs up to the air pump on the passenger side. By closing it off I was getting errors indicating the EGR valve was bad. I have to admit the job is not pretty, but it doesn't leak, and I've got a little louder exhaust tone. Where the Cat was I now have a Y with duals running back to Dynomax mufflers. One of these days I am going to replace the whole works with some long tube headers and necessary plumbing.

 

[vetteboy86]

Is the service engine light on

When the shop did this, did they tell you why this needed to be done. I have a similar set up on my car, and i have an EGR code. If there aren't any codes showing up on the computer i might do this myself.