I've got a question about my oldest son's '96 Cougar. (V8)
He tells me his Cougar has 3, yes THREE, Catalytic Converters on it. This sounded very strange to me... but didn't take me by complete surprise... There is one off of each side of the engine and these two, apparently, feed into a single one. He has been told that two of these have stopped-up (one on the passenger side and the final one) and need replaced. He found out that these three will cost about $700 to buy.
... in the meantime... can I still use the old 'Shade-Tree' trick of drilling holes into these things, to allow the Pressure to bleed off, until he can get them replaced ?
Or, since he lives in a county that does NOT Require exhaust tests to get his Tags renewed, can we just 'Straight-Pipe' them and have them removed altogether ??
Any and all suggestions, as usual, will be GREATLY Appreciated !!
Thanks!
Randy
This is the Fox chassis version of what he is talking about. You can see the "pre-cat" on the driver's side of the front-Y leading into the main cat. The picture of the factory H-Pipe from a Mustang shows the FOUR factory cats. I'm sure there is an aftermarket high-flow dual cat deal that would fit the MN-12 platform, or something (straight pipe, shhhh) could be made.
Unless you plan on moving soon to a place that does require exhaust inespections, I'd take 'em right off. It'll sound and perform better.
On a side note, my fox '88 tbird v6 has 3 cats on it. A friend of mine who has a continental claims he has 5, but I'm not too sure how true that is...
Thanks !
I'll pass on the 'removing' info ! !!
Chop 'em off. I don't have any on my 5.0. Take them to the recycler, I think they are worth decent s value.
When I had cats on my car,I pulled the exhaust,got a long tire iron with the bladed tip,cut off the curved part,and used it like a long chisel and broke out all of the catylist and hollowed them out. Took about 30 minutes,and no more issues.
Id be careful what you do. Back in 99 I owned my first 87 Cougar and hollowed out the cats, cause NY didnt emission test. I moved to VA where they did. Now they put on a new system with straight pipes from the exhaust manifolds to a bigger cat and it worked awesome, even felt more powerful. Fast forward to now and Im living in Atlanta GA where they test till 1985 and you have to have cats. Youre also not allowed to alter the system, OEM only! Id check your local laws and shop around. Ive had 2 or 3 MN12s ranging from 3-4 cats (pre-cats), its kinda a Ford staple. One of my Town Cars had 4 plus resonators. If you can get away with it try a s yard. Most places wont let you buy exhaust though (cats)
yeah my 96 has 2 cats up front (1 after each manifold) then the resonator, then another cat after that.
If you go to supercoupeperformance.com you can order high flow cats to replace them, they will add performance, but will also keep your exhaust a little quieter and less aweful smelling than with no cats at all. and the ones on there are decently priced too. Like 80 bucks a piece, which is WAY less than 800 bucks. thats a rip off man.
You can also order a complete catback kit from them too.
Or, you can just cut em off like everyone said, but then of course your exhaust will be LOUD and SMELLY.
I seriously doubt that anything is being done by them, except hurting emissions at this point. I do not believe that a catalytic converter does anything. I hollowed out my cats on my old 86, and got better. The next year I put all three new ones on, and ended up getting worse then before I put them on. The smog pump worked on it, and so did all the emissions.
did you put on stock sized cats? or bigger ones
I threw on what master ler said would replace it.
the car also had 297k on it.
lol ...done that I have:shakehead:
It was a last ditch effort to try to make the car pass. I was about double the max before I hollowed the cats, barely passed after. the next year I was about 1/2 over and the car would barely run. I probably 2 grand trying to make it pass. Most money I ever put into the car.
ok,,,
I think there is a terminology problem either with me or you all.
The resonators I thought were the small items directly downstream of the headers.
The catalytic is the larger item further down stream.
Now having said this,, no one that i can recall has ever confirm the the question I have asked (Over a dozen times i know) ...
"Does the resonator have a honeycomb restriction on the inside just like the catalytic?
If not,, then the gutting of the cats is as easy as vinnie says.
Im just not sure what the big deal is here because I have never seen anything up inside the "precats" or "resonators" or whatever you all call them. if theres nothing in there then it stands to reason why they are called simply a resonator.
To the poster.. gut the cat (s) , the larger one only and that should get him running fine.
On my 1988, it originally had 3, one on each bank and then one when the two pieces came together. When the replacement was put on, there was only one replacement. Whether it is internally different, I dunno, but it only has one, and it passed emissions.
well:
(http://www.supercoupeperformance.com/images/thumbBuilder.ashx?maxSize=350&imgPath=images/items/142/384281426250.jpg)
To be honest, I have never looked to see if there is honeycomb in the smaller ones. I just banged out the bigger one. I'm now wondering if they did just screw me over when I had that work done. I never even looked at it. I was young and stupid at the time. I am still young and stupid, but I learn from my mistakes.
You have posted up an example of an exhust replacement part the ELIMINATES the precats or resonator.
To let you all know,, i have ran a wire down two sets of these resonators and there are no obstructions. I am pretty sure they are a sound deadening baffel and nothing more. I am hopefully correct.
The first units are indeed resonators, they're baffles, no honeycomb or platinum. I have a gutted cat H pipe, still has resonators, not terribly loud. Before I installed it, I looked down into the resonators to see just wtf they really were lol
sorry let me post the rest of it:
well that makes no sense since they are flaired and provisioned for mating to the headers. lenght looks correct to be a home run to the headers as well.
im really not sure i would trust that company since they obviously dont know how to articulate accurate notes on a specfic model vehicle they claim to have aftermarket support parts for.
i don't understand what you mean... it says right here they go to the manifolds:
here's a link to the page:
http://www.supercoupeperformance.com/partBrowser.aspx?partId=142
it should also be stated that you guys are claming that there is no honeycomb in those cats...
well one day my car developed a really loud and annoying metal ratttling sound underneath. It took me a while buy I isolated the sound to be coming from that area. so I cut the pipe between the two and after the 2nd one, and guess what blew out of the cat after I turned on the engine? a big black chunk of 1" deep honeycomb material.
If you guys are saying theres nothing in there, its more likely b/c its already blown out the back of your tailpipe.
I think they're talking about the resonators having nothing inside them resembling honeycomb.
Yeah, the first 2 on mine are resonators, the second set are cats, gutted though. Sounds a bit "buzzy", and has a very noticeable drone. Won't be put back on when I get to that point.
The "honeycomb" is the actual catalyst, ie, platinum.
Not exactly sure what year my stock stang h pipe is from, but the rest of the parts I have were from an '89 LX 5.0 vert...
The resonators and converters from my Stang H-pipe all had the same materials in them...the honeycomb stuff. Broke it all out and re-installed it. Had a nice deeper tone after that as well.
well ,, some say yes and some say no to resonators having platnum honeycomb.
Is that really Platnum? like the precious metal? doesnt make sense something that valueable is in there.
There is one small issue that all of you are forgetting. He stated it is a 96 which means it has an OBD-II computer. If the computer doesn't get the correct signal from the down stream O2 sensor the computer will throw an error code. It will run really rich. I found this out the hard way with my 96 Bird when I had true duals put on it.
Yep. I don't know if you heard, but a few years ago (and I'm sure it is still happening now) people were going into parking lots and cutting the cats off of people's cars because of the precious metals inside. They are quite valuable for spers.
im sure ive seen discussions on this subject where people have stated the "pre-cats" are no longer required for emmisions and inspection.
all the ones ive seen had honeycomb material inside of them, usually crustified with god knows what from blown headgaskets and lack of tuneups.
Therefore being the reason they can't pass inspection with that cause the catalyst is useless at that point.