Hello Steve

If you gut those cats YOU WILL NOT pass inspection with the sniffer up your tail pipe in California. You may even get tagged as a GROSS POLLUTER and you do not want that.

Just food for thought.

Boon

 

I dont have to worrie about emissions so that's fine but did u lose any hp removing the 2nd cat and gutting the first one? Or do u know if itll f up anything with valves or no? I've heard it can from some people and others say it won't effect them

 

It won't do any harm to your valves and if anything you'll gain more power by removing the very restrictive factory cats. I know in my state so long as I have a shell of a cat or an inspector who dosen't give a flying crap about it I can pass just fine on that note, right now since I've been running with no smog pump that would be the only thing that worrys me when I go to get it inspected as to if the inspector I plan to take it to will fail me. I still have all the stuff and the pump its just no point in having it on there if I don't have cats.

 

alright cool thanks for clearing that up for me. gonna go ahead and gut the front one then soon! And one more thing were u able to gut it while it was still on or did u remove it all?

 

The way me and my dad did it was we cut it off around the area of the O2 sensor (BAD FLIPPING IDEA ON MY END) and while we had it off we beat it out, frankly what I would do and should of done is see if you can notch out a panel on the cat with a torch and get the guts out like that then just weld the panel back on.

 

that sounds like the easiest way so ill probably do it like that lol i appreciate the help

 

No problem man. Let me know how it goes

 

That sounded pretty good to me. Do you know how long the pipe should be? Also, are these mufflers welded on, or bolted?

@ boon, I wont be gutting my cats, as i have had many issues with smog with my old VW. Also, I'm in the Sacramento area and my truck is a 1994 F150 XLT Extended Cab Long(doesn't fit in driveway)bed 5.0L automatic 2wd

i will probably attempt this when i get it registered and smogged.

 

They are welded mufflers and my rule of thumb before cutting them out is seeing how long the muffler is and buy a pipe about an 4 inch or so longer than the muffler at the very least so you have extra pipe to play with and not to little. Auto-zone sells them in 18 inch pieces that can be clamped on the old pipe and in theory if it is the right size you can slip the new pipe in on one end as it will have flared ends and then slip it on the other end and clamp it. if its not long enough then grab another peice from autozone cut it to length and clamp it in where needed or if the pipe you bought is to long then mark on the old pipe a good place to cut it to get the size right and then chop it off.
One thing to note is do not clamp anything down until you are sure you have everything the way you want it or if you do clamp it don't go to crazy with the wrenching it down otherwise you'll never get that pipe off without cutting it if you need to remove it for whatever reason during you instal. That's my two cents on how to do it but please by all means let me know if you run into any other problems along the way. If for some reason you decide not to hook it back up to the tail pipe you can in most states let it puke exhaust under the bed (cheap redneck way of doing it) or you can take the tail pipe and the 90 degree bend to the tail pipe off and stick it out in front of the back tire with the help of a piece of pipe from autozone and a few clamps and a hanger of some sort. Good luck man.
Edit:
I do not have a size for the stock muffler sadly and the one that was on my truck before removing was an aftermarket muffler

 

Be sure that's what you want with that autozone piping. That stuff rusts fast. I'd buy some stainless piping online so at least you aren't getting rid of some nice stainless that's going to rot off.

 

I think i will just head up to the local muffler shop and have them cut off my existing stock muffler, and weld up a straight pipe.

 

That's not a bad idea at all either. its not impossible to install the pipe yourself but it can be a pain in the *** if something goes wrong. I myself just always loved grabbing some cheap pipe and some clamps and doing it myself that way if I didn't like it I could chop it off and change it to fit what I desired. Actually what your doing might be a good call because if i rember right the mufflers inlet and outlet are offset enough that you may need some kind of bend at both ends of the pipe to make it fit from the tailpipe to the exhaust pipe from the cat. I myself could bend my pipe by hand enought to make it fit back when I had tried out a glasspack and the stock piping for the fun of it.

 

On my 94 I just cut the pipe behind the front cat and got a long rod and a big hammer and beat the crap out of the in sides. When beating the cat to pieces randomly start the truck to blow debris out and have a hooked rod to pull the wire mesh screen thing out.
With the cats in and no muffler it won't be loud but it won't be quiet .

 

I had the muffler shop run a 3 inch mandrel bent pipe so there would be no restrictions in the pipe and ran is out in the stock location. No muffler just cut the factory y pipe in front of the muffler and ran the new one, It sounds like my 66 Mustang did with 30 inch glass packs on it. It passed smog with no problems and that was in an enhanced smog area in the San Joaquin Valley.

 

My set-up is a y-pipe behind stock cats into two straight-back pipes and bent to 45 degrees at the rear. When I bought the truck, it had a single in/single out Flowmaster 40, but being a si/so, it just wasn't loud enough. A couple of months later, I took it to an exhaust shop with an intent of putting a Cherrybomb glasspack on (my grandpa had a set on his truck and said was too loud, he had them on for maybe 6 weeks and then gave them to me). I've always the sound of a glasspack, just has it's own sound. When I told the guy what I wanted (cut out the Flow and weld in place the glasspack) he said he would if I wanted, but he wouldn't. He told me it wouldn't be any louder than the Flowmaster I had on. My dad was with me and he was telling me to listen to the guy, even though I knew what I wanted.

In the end, I had my current system installed for about $150. It's not as loud as some trucks at idle, but it has a wonderful sound around 1500 rpm's.

I've been tossing around the idea of buying a set of Long-tubes and if that doesn't 'louden' it a little, then replace the rear cat with a test-pipe. On second thought, I may try the latter first, since a test pipe is what, less than $10 compared to a $200 set of headers.

Anyway, if you were to go my route, I think you would be pleased.