i have an 04 5.4L I want to gut my rear cats as they are not monitored by o2 sensors. is gutting cats a hard process? what does it intail?

 

personally if I were you I would cut them out completely and replace that section with a piece of pipe. I had a 98 f150 that I gutted two cats to get a better sound and although is sounded good out of the tail pipe while driving I had what sounded like an exhaust leak. what the noise was is the gases in the exhaust were entering that larger empty body of the cat, bouncing around and then going out giving it a strange noise in the cab. if you are worried about some one looking at it for inspection or something you could cut them out and gut them then slide a piece of pipe through them and reinstall. this would give the appearance that they are still there but only a pipe is being used if that makes sense? that is just my personal experience tho. I personally cant weld or fab so running the pipe wasn't an option for me in my own garage. hope this helps

 

umm...if your in socal..think twice

 

Im gunna run a pipe straight through to pass a visual emissions inspection. so im not worried about the exhaust entering the larger area of the hollow cat.

 

The hardest part is not damaging the casing of the cat so when they look at it they can tell it was tampered with. I'm not sure how high they sit, but my buddy pulled his down and then cut a hole in the top to remove the insides. then he placed a pipe in it so it wouldn't do what was described above and welded the piece back to the top. He was stationed on the Marine base in Cali, so I'm not sure they really looked that close.

 

Put the guts in a baggie and send them to me after!

 

I bought 2.5" fake cats online. Waiting for them to be shipped. They look like high flow cats but it's just straight pipe. Google it and you'll see what I mean. It will fool inspections

 

I sure am glad I live in the land of no inspections

 

I've done this to a few trucks...I remove the cats and just punch out the insides with a long breaker bar. It leaves no evidence of being tampered with.

Dunno if it'll pass the sniffer though.