Bill's melted catalytic converter

["content22207" <brobertson@xxxx>]

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: