Well, he does enjoy breeding wild cats, so it's clear that our cohort is heavily into liberties that can be somehow distorted/interpreted as rights. Don't worry L., we're just ribbing ya.
I would contemplate removing cats in only a few instances: 1. Your state has no emissions test - if they don't test, they obviously don't care. 2. Your car is old - Catalytic converter fires happen, and are lethal to your car. A small quirk in your fuel injection computer could cause a catastrophic fire you won't discover until its too late. 3. Your car is low on power - 308s expecially. A Ferrari lister in Seattle has removed cats from his 512TR - with proper tuning, his engine blows cleaner than when the cats were originally installed. This has been independently verified by the State of Washington DMV, since they test emissions there. Still feeling guilty? Plant some damned trees. Six to eight trees consume as much carbon dioxide from the earth's atmosphere naturally as your car produces from 15,000 miles of use annually. I say, plant eight trees in your backyard for every car you own. Throw your cats in the trash. Enjoy life.
Carbon dioxide is NOT the problem, sport. It is CO & NOx, which are NOT alleviated by planting 6 trees. Geez, some people...
I don't want to bore too many people with the details, but a modern catalytic converter is referred to as a "three way" catalyst. It is designed to do both oxidation of CO and HC (carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons for the college graduates; nasty fumes that will kill you and unburned gas for the high school drop outs) and reduction of NOx (oxides of nitrogen). The first two are kind of easy to deal with. You only need to get the temperature up and a souce of oxygen and you can continue to burn them off (CO + 1/2 O2 => CO2; aHxCy + b02 => cH2O + dCO2). NOx is a bit of a pain to get rid of (xNOx => yN2 + zO2) and more modern emmision requirements are focusing on this bad actor. It is the result of lean burning engines where the temperatures inside the cylinder go "way the hell up" (technical term). Anyway, a modern cat takes out ~99.7% or higher of these polluters. If a car is perfectly tuned, you can play around a lot on the engine management side and not require too much work on the down stream side. Cats are there to make the car street legal. Emmision requirements are getting closer and closer between Europe and NA (CA in particular). Taking them off a car (without doing other tricks to get it to meet emmision levels) is just destroying the environment. Now before someone starts yelling at me that they only drive their Ferrari 2k miles a year and that their lawn mower is 20x worse for the environment (which is true, but they are starting to regulate those too), pollution is pollution. Some of us are actually committed to leave this place in a better condition for future generations. As for credibility on this issue, I design and manufacture these things and work for the company that invented them. Wow, I actually got to use my education on Ferrarichat. There is hope for the nerds!!!
Gotta agree with ze shark here. I love hp and blame no one for making as much of it as possible, but try the cross pipes and filter route or even hi flo cats but think twice about going catless, as it is pretty selfish in regards to the big picture. I even try to walk a lot and ride my bike to balance the high hp thrills I take on the road. My 700+hp viper only got about 12mpg with a heavy foot but it did have cats!!
To everyone, and those concerned evironmentalist, I posted the idea of removing the cats not realizing the car had a three piece set up. I'm a bit of an auto neophyte and did not know the car had a center resonartor. Now that i have had time to research the system and received a number of suggestions, my plan is to leave the cats in place, get the stebro crossover, with K&N's and likely install a Mille Miglia exhaust. The Tubi has a bad reputation for intolerable resonnance at 3 to 3.5K RPM with the 456 and 550's MB PS While I don't doubt cars and other forms of internal combustion create forms of pollution and smog, why is it when the sun goes down in So. Cal, the smog clears and the air is clear?...cars are still on the road. Sort of makes you wonder who is really right?
Well...wouldn't it be nice if high-flow cats were as cheap as a set of bypass pipes. Anyone have a study that determines how many pollutants are emittted when a catalytic converter catches fire, and burns the entire car to the ground? I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but I'd have to say that the leading cause of premature 308 death in this country is directly related to engine fires. I had a friend lose his 308 to an engine fire, another had cats on his TR suddenly become glowing filaments from internal gasoline combustion, and I don't want to lose my Ferrari to the same fate. Image Unavailable, Please Login
PS: This is an old picture of my 456 GT...I had it at Crystal Cove the last few weeks Image Unavailable, Please Login
Catalytic converters don't catch fire. I've even been the one that has to explain this to OEM's (not really a fun meeting to be in). What happens is that you end up running way too rich and the raw fuel ignites on the catalyst. The cat itself is not the problem!!!
But, correct me if I'm wrong, Cats are a tremendous source of heat 'back there'. When running too rich, the gasoline ignites because the Cat is hot enough to ignite it - the rest of the exhaust system does not reach these temperatures. By removing the Cats, you remove this ignition source of the gasoline and will greatly reduce the risk of fire - you still have the ignition problem, but not the flames to remind you....is there a better way to head-off this problem?
2 points: 1) modern cats no longer catch fire, nor do they have raw fuel in them, thanks to computer controlled injection & ignition systems 2) do not confuse smog with pollution; regardless of day or night, a decatted car spews out CO, NOx, and many othe rharmful pollutants. Again, don't y'all breathe the same air out there? We do here. 'Nuff said. Please, do NOT remove your cats.
The main reason of the cat being their is to burn gasoline that doesn't get consumed during the combustion in the cylinder. The heat source is still the unburned hydrocarbons and there are many reasons that you can have the engine running rich (poorly set up carbs or FI, fouled plug, etc...). If you remove them, then yes, you do eliminate the the ignition source, but you're still not solving the problem. BTW, you may want to save early cats and try and recover the precious metal in them. Early ones had up to 600 g/ft3 of catalyst volume in platinum. Even with modern ones with much lower levels, they are still one of the most expensive components that go on a car.
