[oldude]

on my SILs 96 tbird 4.6 there are 3 cats. The third one in the middle of the car has a rattle in it. Can we cut it off and just run a stright pipe? He has a cracked intake manifold where the heater hose connects to it and the car is blowing white smoke. I figure if we cut off the cat then we could see which bank the smoke is coming from and do a leak down test on it.

 

[The Great Obucina]

yes you could run a y-pipe in place of the third cat. whether or not you can get away with it and inspections....i dont know. As for the manifold, take it from someone who knows, replace the manifold, you wont be able to repair the leak, trust me i know. It will be alot less of a hassle to just replace the manifold and being done with it than doing a leak down. It is probably the passenger side bank that is smoking anyway, but just replace the damn thing.

joseph

 

[oldude]

No inspections here.....yet I wasn't going to try and repair the manifold. I thought we might should do a leakdown test on the cyls to see if there is another problem before we get it back together. Glad to know we can cut the cat off with no ill effects.

 

[Leland Jacobson]

A more sneaky way to take care of that 3rd cat , is to pull the unit off, and cut an "H" in it on top.... gut it out , and stitch weld it back together........presto everything looks stock, and its still all stainless, with no visible alterations

 

[TMcColl]

A good option for the third cat is to replace it and the resonator with a Magnaflow straight through 2 in one out muffler and then connect that to a good cat back system. There could be a droning problem with just the pipe in there.

Tony