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cat is shot..solutions?


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Hey everyone my cat is shot. It rattles alot from the inside and both heat shields fell off. The car is also idling really rough and i originally thought it was the carburator but am not sure now. I think it could be that my cat is so plugged up that it wont run right. I dont have a welder and dont know anyone who does so for now im thinking of taking the cat off with an impact gun and then pounding the inside of it out and putting it back on. What do you all think?

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wouldn't be the first time.

 

I have only gutted one cat in my life, and what I found was the best method involved a piece of 1/2 inch electrical conduit.. really thin gage metal pipe. I twisted it around and it acted like a hole saw boring through the ceramic honeycomb...

 

Any long, skinny object that you can get into the cavity, will work. jut jam it in there, and bang it in. I was grabbing the cat, and hitting the exposed end of my pipe agains the driveway to drive it further in..

 

Make sure you get it all out before re installing, though!!! you dont want a chunk to come free and block you up again in the future, and the only way to ensure that doesn't happen is to get it ALL out!

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alright sounds easy enough. Thanks for the quick reply. Ill post results after i do it this weekend. Once my car is old enough to not need emissions im going to look around and see if i can find someone to fab up a new exhaust for me WITHOUT cats muuuwwwahhha. Im thinking 2 1/4 inch exhaust from the stock Y pipe back to a borla muffler or something like that. Should sound pretty sweet.

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a quick check would be to just to unbolt the cat and run it around for a bit, if it runs better, your cat is plugged (boy this sounds stupid :rolleyes:)

 

instead of poking a hole through your cat, you can cut it in half, gut it, and weld it up again, I did that on my XT, just to find out it was empty it had the shape and heatshields of a cat, it just wasn't.

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Bury it.. It's no use to anyone now, it's dead.

 

I was gonna suggest taking it to a vet if it hadn't already crossed the line, to put it out of it's misery first.. but discretion prevailed.

 

Joost, he doesnt have access to a welder. anyone know if an ea81 cat has a straight access to it? mine has bends in the Y pipe that would prevent me from removing it and sticking a screwdriver into the end of the pipe and into the cat chamber.... is the EA81 different in that regard?

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hahahaha you guys kill me. :lol:

 

I was under the car today. I think there is a big difference between 2wd and 4wd exhausts as the 4wd ones have cat and y pipe as a one piece deal where as my cat comes off leaving the y pipe there.

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my 87 GL10 is a front wheeler, and has a unified Y pipe/catalytic converter.. Well, the point is you are OK to go. Have fun gutting that cat. You might want to skin it, while youre at it... that way the meat doesnt get covered with fur...

 

 

Good lord, and *I* am a veterinary technician by trade!! I shouldnt be making these kinds of jokes!

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hahahahahahaha i love this board so much. You guys are great. Anyways, When i was under my car i swore that the catylitic converter, or however you spell it ( now you know why i abreviated..I CANT SPELL LOL) was separate from the Y. I saw one u bolt in front of the cat and one behind it.

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I have TWO cats. One is a tabby and the other one is fluffy gray.

 

But my Loyale 4WD also has two cats, at least I'm pretty sure they're both cats. One is in the y-pipe and that's where the O2 sensor is. But there is another further back, and I'm pretty sure it's a cat and not just a resonator.

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Yea my car has two cats as well. The cat that i thought was shot was still good however. I found my rattle. It ended up being the half a$$ weld job on the exhaust mount that goes from the tranny to the exhaust. It had broken and was rattling against my tranny. Oh well...looks as if my car still has carb problems...can anyone say WEBER!!!!

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Mine was a feedback carb car so i have the two cats unfortunalty. Once it doesnt need to pass emissions anymore ill rip them both out and put a straight through exhaust on it.

 

you can also lean out the mixture on emissions day and enrichen to the normal level for day to day driving.

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you can also lean out the mixture on emissions day and enrichen to the normal level for day to day driving.

 

Well the reason im waiting until it doesnt need to pass anymore to rip the cats out is that they do a visual inspection and my car would fail before it even got tested if it didnt have the cats present.

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Well the reason im waiting until it doesnt need to pass anymore to rip the cats out is that they do a visual inspection and my car would fail before it even got tested if it didnt have the cats present.

 

weld a pipe inside your cat, it will still look like the original cat ;)

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