Thanks for the concern, but a stopped up converter with melted honeycomb really isn't worth much. Remember when my car sucked crap into its fuel system this summer? That sad chain of events ended in the converter. My local muffler house would have bent me a pipe, but they didn't want to mess with the 4 bolt flange. And there is absolutely nothing after the flange to connect to (flange is welded to the converter body). Since the existing converter guts were more than counter productive at this point, and since I needed *something* to connect the Y pipe to the muffler, out came my big screwdriver and hammer. It may be less than optimal, but it isn't stopped up either, and that makes me happy (plus I have $90 to spend somewhere else -- hmm, what can I buy for the little silver car that costs *only* $90...). FWIW, I seem to remember my outlet pipe being basically the same diameter as the muffler tubing (I had a clear line of sight). I'd be more concerned about performance lost to turbulence in the hollow shell. Was concerned about noise (gutted converters on my high compression Lincoln echoed -- past tense, now straight piped -- horrifically), but car sounds fine. May be a bit "throatier", but I didn't notice. I *DID* notice how much cooler exhaust is (a definite plus in a plastic car). Of course a straight pipe is better, but if nothing else I look legal. Could the reason I didn't notice the extra HP be that my mighty Volvo PRV is so high performance already (snicker)? Watch this space for results of this weekend's experiment to wire the cold start valve into my unused full throttle switch -- I'm hoping it'll act like secondaries on a carburetor. We'll see... Bill Robertson #5939 >--- In dmcnews@xxxx, "mgutkowski@xxxx" <webmaster@xxxx> wrote: > Hi Bill > > I seem to remember a loooong time ago, someone else suggested this, but > it's not a great idea for several reasons: