hollowed out cat
 

has anyone heard of this or has done this... takin off ur cat and hollowing it out to make it less restrictive? is it a good or bad idea or is it really worth it. i just heard about this today so im tryin to find out more about it cause idk how it would do with the 2.0l engine....

it will be a fairly decent FREE gain. Be VERY careful when removing the nuts that hold the cat to the manifold. I broke 2 and stripped 2 on mine when I went to install my header. It caused me to swap headers for the obx 4-1 that eliminates the first cat all together. Also, you will throw a CEL and run rich without a proper MIL fix.

how do i go about to do a MIL fix?

apex motorsports sells the MIL for about $30 I think.....when you find it on their website send me a link. I need one also. I'm just too lazy to go find it myself.

ya, you can do that, but most of the time it makes your exhaust pretty raspy, its usually better to find some sort of testpipe, the exhaust tone is a lot nicer with a test pipe than a hollowed cat... but its free, and you cant argue with free :p

Or you can just go to the For Sale section and buy my header and catless downpipe, and get some really good gains! :bt:

you selling it Dan?? I didn't see that. Whats up??

any links to Apex Motorsports for the MIL thingamabobby...

My wife went back to work, and she's working opposite shifts from me, now I'm lucky if I get to drive the car once a week. She really could care less about making it any faster, so I decided to focus on finishing my Explorer since I'm tired of driving my 97 Astro cargo van (company car) everywhere. I'm ready to put the motor back in it, but I'd really like to do my heads and cam on it first, and that's gonna run me close to $1500..... you get the picture....

got any pics of this explorer project?

whats the best method to remove the catalyst core from the Cat? Air chissel or just a hammer and screw driver?

i used an angled die grinder and a carbide bit. Drill as far done the center as you can. Turn it upside down and do the same thing. Then take an air hammer and cut a big X across the cat. This should cause everything to crumble towards the center. Then i took some needlenose pliers and pulled out the metal mesh weave that was holding it all in. Came out in 2 huge clumps.

still have your de-catted dp? Wanna sell it to me?

when we did my friends, we just took a BIIIIIIIG ass drill bit and went to town, seemed to work fine for us :p...

I've got one..... :D