Just find the sticker with the vacuum routing diagram under your hood. If your truck is supposed to have a cat, it will say "Catalyst" on the sticker. If it doesn't need one, it will say "Non-Catalyst"

FWIW, my friends '96 F-250HD 460 has a cat.

 

I can type in my truck info on Magnaflow's California application lookup chart for catalytic converters and my.model year and ecumenical size pops up. It's like $400.00!

 

The sticker under the hood does say catalyst. Sucks

 

You mentioned "the first cat" - that is the only cat your truck will have. There will only be one O2 sensor in front of it.

 

Ok, which is weird. The guy I bought it from said that he cut the exhaust after the first cat. There's about 2 feet of empty space between the cut in the pipe, and where the remnant of the pipe connecting to the muffler starts back up.

 

The muffler is a long ways back from the cats on these trucks

 

Oh I know, I'm just saying there is a good two feet of pipe gone, I'll post pics tomorrow. He said something about the second cat going bad, which is why I asked the original question.

 

there should be a sticker like the one below.
In the photo below the calibration code is "4-54E-R10".



/

 

My truck was painted very crappily from the original red, to white, and now black, I'll try some paint thinner on a sticker I see that has been painted over.

 

ok, sub, here's some pics showing what I've got.





So that's the cat, here's where the pipe initially ends about 1/3 way down the 2nd piece of the drive shaft.



Then about 2 feet later, it picks back up in front of the axel. Mind you, she's a crew cab long bed.

 

OK I stand corrected.
The 4-98A-R00:


Says you do have a Cat.

 

Yeah, it has the injection tube going into it on top. Looking at my pictures, what would you think was cut out of the exhaust line? Secondary cat that someone out on there?

 

My friend's '96 F-250HD 460 Crew Cab Short Bed went Y pipe to cat, then it was a long straight shot of pipe to the muffler, which split out into two small pipes.

Here is what the muffler would have looked like

 

Ok so its the muffler the guy cut out. With a torch, and a messy job. A hacksaw is much easier and cleaner