Now this is good for two reasons. The first being that CAT's fail eventually and secondly its a big restriction in the exhaust system. So the idea is to throw it alway. So we did, well Calum did. Cheers bud!
Last Modified Mar 06
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Since my car is an M plate it does the NON-CAT test for the MOT emissions. See the diagram below.
Now this is good for two reasons. The first being that CAT's fail eventually and secondly its a big restriction in the exhaust system. So the idea is to throw it alway. So we did, well Calum did. Cheers bud!
Now the normal method for removing the CAT is to remove the exhaust from the CAT section and get a big hammer and crow bar and hammer the CAT into bits!! If you are very lucky the CAT literally falls out the exhaust cause it's turned to dust, well near enough. Nope didn't happen for us this time. Boulderdash
So I left the car with Calum and he set about taking the entire downpipe with CAT off the car. Why? Well the CAT was so loose in the exhaust that every time we smacked it with the hammer it shot up the pipe and just dissipated all the energy to nothing. Hardly dented the thing and we couldn't drill it either for the same reason. Every time we stuck the drill into it, it rose up the exhaust pipe away from the drill. Darn and blast it.
So Calum spent the next few days working on the car at night after work just soaking and removing a bolt at a time from the turbo to downpipe. Sometimes the bolt came out after 24hrs of soaking and sometimes it needed 48hrs but they did all come out.
Behold the CAT and CAT pipe, note the little damage we inflicted on the CAT after 90 minutes of drilling and hammering! Hardly a scratch. Note also how the CAT looks like a large bung in the exhaust strangling the engine. Does make you wonder about the usefulness of these things.
and a round of applause for the man himself, calum with the entire CAT downpipe assembly
So any differences then? The car sounds better and does seem to pick up a bit more eagerly too. To be honest the weather this time of year is not suited to driving hard and the car is more than capable of lighting up the rear wheels in a straight line right through to 3rd gear. Of note is that when Calum drove the car afterwards he commented on how crap the brakes were. Oh dear, guess what the next thing to get looked at was............