Clogged cat?

I had a cat clog about 4 years ago. I lost all power, however, there was no ratting sound and I never thought to feel the differences in the temperatures of the exhaust (or tailpipes).

My Dad looked all over for the problem (at the time he worked in a Ford garage), and he finally figured out that it was a converter. Luckily, it was covered by the 8/80 warrantee or else it was going to cost about $800 because they replaced the entire pipe.

Good luck.

Joe

Sounds good Scott. Like you said, you should be able to shake the pipe on a bench and hear something. It should be a honeycomb in there with some tiny tack welds (two stage cats are really high tech. ). But it should be fairly hard to 'blow' that cat material out, unless it had completely disintegrated already.

Have you put on mech's gloves and carefully punched the cat/heat shield? I have almost always been able to make a bad one rattle doing this.

One can also drill a small hole in the exhaust in front of the [pre] cat. If air is flying out of there at like 100 PSI, that suggests a restriction.

It sure sounds like a bad one though - his comments on the contrast in each pipe's heat saturation, yours on the sound (my car sounds like it has a turbo if I put a banana in the tail pipes), etc.

Good luck with getting it fixed.

Sounds good man. If you remember, post back with how the tone changes from the, ahem, modified stock pipe vs the new H-pipe.

I would recommend using a band clamp on the H-connection (Pep might sell band clamps locally. Not sure about Napa or Merles - the latter is my fav local parts store).
I am not a fan of welding that union together (it is welded on the '94 ).

That part might just be my personal preference.

Good luck John.